20 SEPTEMBER 1946, Page 13

PRAYERS AND THE WEATHER

SIR,—" Surely even professed "•scientists "must regard with dismay " the frequent falsification of the weather forecasts. If Miss Winckworth is at all concerned in the harvest, she must have noticed this fact, sometimes favourable, sometimes not. Why or how this happens, the scientists do not tell us ; but, maybe they are not all quite so certain as she claims to be that the Creator of the world has no control over its weather. And is it quite certainly " a retrogression to the age of superstition " (about A.D. 27?) for " even professed Christians " to follow the injunction then given to ask for good things, and to accept Paul's later advice that we should make known our requests unto God? Not all scientists share Miss Winckworth's certitude that to do so it " nonsense," though she did not accuse the Churches (as your last week's heading suggests) of the super- fluous act—at any rate in the Cotswolds—of " praying for rain " in 1946.