30 AUGUST 1940, Page 5

Hesitant though I am about impugning the arithmetic of The

Times, I find my credulity rather strained by the declara- tion in its leading article on Wednesday that " in the settlement of 1919 nearly a billion and a hall of Magyars were included in Rumania " The population of the world is, I think, about two billions. Even the Buda-Pesth wireless would hardly claim that three-quarters of it was Magyar.