26 JANUARY 1940, Page 6

Some of Lord Halifax's hearers last Saturday must have noticed

one odd, but quite unimportant, little slip, which no reports I have seen in the daily papers reproduce. Referring to the Grenville touch in the River Plate battle the Foreign Secretary spoke of the ' Revenge's ' great fight against the Spanish Armada (which he made to rhyme with " raider " just as decisively as Mr. Churchill in his broadcast the same even- ing made Spee—no Graf about it—rhyme with " flee " rather than "flay"), and wondered what Sir Richard Grenville would have said in 1588 if he could have foreseen how his example would be emulated in 1939. But it was not the Armada that made the Revenge' famous. She was, it is true, in that great fight, but under Drake's command, not Grenville's. Tenny- son has made the ' Revenge ' immortal, and it was when " at Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay " that her crew took action-stations for their last fight. That was in 1591, not 1588. One of Lord Halifax's fellow-Fellows at All Souls could tell him everything about it.

* * * *