Back on course
Sir: Having criticised The Spectator for that tasteless contribution about Princess Anne, and urged the swift removal of the subterranean Palmer, honesty compels me to write to you again, this time in praise of your journal, which seems suddenly restored to a sane course following your return from foreign climes.
If one was sensible I suppose one should wait to see if the conversion is not merely a flash in the pan. But there is so much good sense in your issue of September 25 that already I begin to hope for a continuance of a Spectator which will provide intelligent comment on issues more important than the fatal beauty of the Waughs, the versatility of sauna bath attendants, and claptrap from the Underground.
On Rhodesia you adopt an attitude which the British government should have taken years ago, and you rightly expose the double standards which Sir Alec DouglasHome has himself supported. British ' progressive opinion ' — and what an unreasoning contradiction in terms that is — demands acquiescence in almost instant native control. If this happened Rhodesia would in a very few years be in precisely the same position as her neighbours, Zambia and Tanzania. And who would that benefit? Certainly not the political Opposition, if it still existed. And certainly not the black African, by then in the grip of a dictatorship far more harsh and unsympathetic than any white government.
There is no short-term answer to Rhodesia's problems. There may, indeed, be no conclusive answer at all, with a native population doubling itself every twenty years and the small white population hampered at every turn, as they are today, by ill-conceived sanctions in their efforts to expand the economy and thereby provide jobs for some 50,000 school-leavers every year. But at least the white Rhodesians are trying to find an answer, which is more than one can say of the bigoted politicians and civil servants in Whitehall so insistent on forcing a Western-type democracy on a reluctant and illprepared African community.
I did not, however, intend to praise you on Rhodesia alone. So many of your Notebook paragraphs are refreshingly realistic, including your shrewd appraisals of the Member for Smethwick and that tepid creature, the erstwhile leader of the Liberal party.
You mention in passing that Lord Eccles no longer commands the respect of the ' artistic community.' In passing, again, this prompts me to wonder whether the artistic community, as it is most widely envisaged today, commands much respect from a large proportion of your regular readers. Nevertheless, this was a first-class Notebook of topical comment. And the standard was well maintained by your anonymous correspondent writing of Fleet Street's crisis; and by Patrick Cosgrave courageously explaining the virtues of patriotism (which are so much more positive than the preachings of the editorial board of Oz).
All in all I am beginning, in fact, to feel quite sorry for Mr Palmer, banished apparently to Nigeria. It is probably the right place for him, and he writes with such heightened judgement and observation that I hope you will keep him there. I shall then be able to renew my subscription at Christmas time with complete confidence.
Gerald Pawle Mawnan, Cornwall
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