22 NOVEMBER 1940, Page 18

MR. MURRY AND LORD HALIFAX

Sta,—With the -general lines of the review of Mr Murry's book, The Betrayal of Christ by the Cl-urches, which appears in your issue of November ith I find myself in agreement. But I do not think that your reviewer does justice to Mr. Murry's analysis of Lord Halifax's speech to the Oxford undergraduates. That analysis I should de- scribe as devastating, and it needed to be made on account of the use to which the speech has been put for purposes of propaganda. Your reviewer dismisses Lord Halifax's signature to the telegram, which was sent by zoo Conservative M.P.s to Mr. Lloyd George in 1919, as merely the regrettable indiscretion of a young man. Lord Halifax was born in 1881; he was therefore nearly 40 years of age at the time, and he was shortly afterwards made a member of the Government. Moreover, what evidence is there to show that Lord Halifax looks upon the incident as an indiscretion and that he has regretted it ever since?—Yours, &c., ALEC R. Viol ER.

St. Deiniors Library, Hamadan, Chester.