24 MAY 1935, Page 6

. Mrs. van der Elst may have a warm heart

and a long purse—I believe she has both, and I wish her nothing but well in her campaign against capital punishment—but I think she could do with a little co-operation in the drafting of her appeals. Here, for example, is the opening sentence of a leaflet I have had put in my hands : " I wish you who are earnest thinkers to realize what a terrible thing it is that a man or woman that very often is not in their right senses and for the time unbalanced and ha.4 been proved could commit crimes that afterwards they themselves are staggered to think they had committed."

The full-stop seems a little premature, but there it is. Capital punishment of grammar and syntax is evidently still in vogue.