30 JANUARY 1926, Page 15

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

Sin,—Mr. H. Percy Mortimer surmises that " Pirelli " is an Italian firm. Pirelli General Cable Works, Ltd., is a British company, dating from before the War. The company ,has an extensive factory at Southampton, to visit which parties of the British Association were invited at the time of the meeting at Southampton last autumn We were

shown most interesting and beautiful processes of the manu- facture of telephone cables. I saw none but British about the works.—! am, Sir, &c.,

WILLIAM BARNARD.

Junior Athenaeum Club, 116 Piccadilly, W. 1.

[Stock Exchange books of reference inform us that the capital of the -English works is guaranteed jointly by the Milan company and by the General Electric Co., Ltd. No doubt there are Protectionists so pedantic that they object to this. As our correspondence columns are open to the expression of every kind of opinion we published a letter last week on the subject. But this has led to some misunder- standing. Several correspondents have written to us under the impression that our purpose in publishing the letter was to support an extreme Protectionist point of view, and to find fault with the General Electric Company, Ltd., for not being sufficiently Protectionist. Nothing was further from our thoughts. If the English Pirelli works had a much closer association with Italy than they have we should not object, but on the contrary would welcome such international co-operation.—En. Spectator.]