Spectator's Notebook
T DON'T know whether there were twenty or 'forty or sixty thousand nuclear disarmers snaking along Knightsbridge on Monday. I didn't count them myself and 1 wonder how Frank Cousins got round to it : he was reported as claiming that the multitude was more than a, hun- dred thousand strong by the time it, was safely assembled in Hyde Park. What did, strike me about the marchers was the tendernes,s of their youth. In the mile or so that I watched two out of three were very obviously under eighteen, and the proportion seemed about the same among those milling-around in the park itself. Of course, by this time the Aldermaston March is something of an adolescents' dream, combining inchoate Idealism with a happy revolt against that old headmaster, hiking with skifIle, and agreeable con- tact with the opposite sex. In the schools, I gather, CND supporters join at about the age of eleven ('You don't like bombs, do you?') and graduate to the Easter at fifteen or so—much as the promise of a really 'tough camping holiday is held out to early-joining Boy Scouts. Perhaps next year Canon Collins could arrange a shorter march for Wolf Cubs and Brownies. I'm sure the response would be gratifying.
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