22 SEPTEMBER 1967, Page 27

Sir : Professor Brogan, turning from scholarship to journalism, has

mislaid accuracy. I never asserted that if I had to leave Britain I would rather live in the Soviet Union than in the United States. I have left Britain and I am living in France.

Certainly Professor Brogan knows the United States far better than I do. but I would like to make a single one-upmanship claim. I have been put under surveillance and deported from Ameri- can territory—one of my most agreeable memories (1 nearly drank a charming plain clothes officer under the table). Has Professor Brogan had that experience? To make the occasion even more memorable, they tried to deport me to Haiti, but I slipped into Havana instead.

As for Moscow I obviously know the place superficially rather better than Professor Brogan, and surely he is wrong in believing that before the revolution I would have been able without diffi- culty 'to share in the sacramental life' of my church. Russia never had a large Roman Catholic popu- lation. In any case Christianity is surely more im- portant than Catholicism and there would be no great problem in finding an orthodox church for worship. In any case I would rather see my church honourably suppressed than corrupted within by such war propagandists as Cardinal Spellman and Bishop Sheehan.