28 JANUARY 1955, Page 7

ON TUESDAY I attended the annual banquet of the National

Farmers' Union and listened with the greatest admiration to the soft answers with which Mr. R. A. Butler turned away (temporarily) the bucolic wrath which had boiled up against the Government earlier in the day. The Chancellor is a clever man and this was a most adroit performance. But he is also a civilised man and really should not be mealy-mouthed when there is no political necessity for it. He said that he was quoting Samuel Johnson when he observed that 'he who does not Mind his tummy will hardly mind anything else.' Would the word 'belly' turn the stomachs of our modern rustics? What would Dr. Johnson have said after hearing such gentility? That 'this was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to'?