A CAT'S LIFE
SIR,-1 am sorry that the Spectator should feel that the News Chronicle has done some disservice to the cause of penal reform by its main news story of March 21. We had rather hoped the reverse.
I am sorry, too, that you should employ a mis- leading argument in order to 'prove' that our pre- sentation was misleading. If the Chronicle was wrong to say that '78 per cent. of the people of Britain want a return of corporal punishment for crimes of violence,' the Spectator is equally wrong to revise the phrase to read 'a crime of violence.'
The precisely correct formula would have been `at least one crime of violence'—as we indicated in a note to the tables.
But surely this argument is, partly at least, beside the point. It should not be used to obscure the appal- ling fact that 78 per cent. of the people of this country want a return to flogging for any reason at all.— Yours faithfully, IAIN COLQUHOUN Chief Assistant Editor
News Chronicle, /2-22 Bouverie Street, EC4
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