28 JULY 1939, Page 6

Sir Denison Ross, I see, has been counselling foreign students

to read Mr.—or, as I should now say, Dr.—P. G. Wodehouse as a means of perfecting their English. That seems to me quite shocking advice, and I speak as a Wodehouse devotee. To prove my case I turned to the volume occupying at the moment the Wodehouse niche at my bedside, and opening it at random chanced on a description of someone's indisposition: "The poor old bird was looking pretty green about the gills." Admirable. But as model English for foreigners? It is like the phrase which a foreign spokesman employed the other day in complete good faith to intimate to his hostess that he was afraid he must be going. I cannot quote it here—nor on a postcard.