22 JULY 1955, Page 15

SIR.—it is not a fact that Englishmen (why the limit

of nationality?) delight in hanging, or that hanging has become a national sport.

It is totally untrue that the extinction of a fellow-being has a fascination for the people of this country.

It is the reverse of fact that we have a weak Homo Secretary.

It is playing with fact to declare that to hang Mrs. Ellis was a decision of barbarity.

It is cheap farce to write that men who go on hanging women who should not be hanged can hardly expect to be held in universal esteem.

The fact is that your leading article, with all its fictitious sentiment, its woeful exaggera- tions and its brutal innuendoes, looks sus- piciously like the maudlin stuff which is the outcome of a hangover.—Yours faithfully, Lancaster Gate, W2

W. JAMES