Student stirs
Sir: In the last issue to hand (21 June). Mr Peter Croft of Christ Church ends his letter with a paragraph showing that the capacity for moral discrimination is not dead in Oxford. In one somewhat disjointed sen- tence he offers an apology for a pun and then an assurance 'that nothing would cause me greater pleasure than to hold a machine gun massacre of them all [American tour- ists] in Tom Quad'.
Now although our moralist may be famous as a light to the gentiles from Tom Quad to Carfax, he is weak in practice. Machine guns are very messy unless care- fully handled. Oxford stone is soft, not in- deed as soft as human bodies, but soft and liable to some damage. There is also a dan- ger of ricochet, especially in an enclosure. Doesn't Mr Croft realise that by massacring American tourists there he might accident- ally kill an innocent party?
I suggest that he get a little practical ex- perience by joining bands of English tourists in foreign parts.
Earl Miner Department of English, University of Cali- fornia, Los Angeles
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