HOUSING DRIVE : 1919 AND 1946
SIR,—I read with interest the reference in Spectator's Notebook to my recent speech on housing. I make no complaint at all about it, but the inevitably condensed newspaper reports which we have nowadays do sometimes result in a sentence, taken from its context, giving a completely wrong impression of what has been said. I do not think that anyone who heard my speech would for a moment have reached the conclusion suggested in your note, which would, of course, have been quite fantastic. I gave all the relevant statistics and these, I think, do point to the con- clusions (a) that, taking the first year after the 1914-18 war and the first year after the recent war in isolation, we have moved about four times as fast, and (b) that there is reasonable ground for supposing that, by the end of. the four-year period, we shall have maintained that relative Progress. May I add that I explained in my speech a special reason for making the comparison and added that I did not think the comparison was a very useful one, for "the Labour Government would have to be judged on the adequacy of its own accomplishments, not on the inade-
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