" WORLD WITHOUT FAITH "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] , Sza,—As it has taken Mr. Verschoyle three months to come to the business of reviewing my book, World Without Faith, I should have imagined he'd had time to read it. . - That he hasn't had time to squeeze this little job into the whirl of his activities probably accounts for his suggesting that I have " an innocent belief in .the regenerating faculties of Communism."
I admire the fertility of Mr. Verschoyle's imagination, ,but if he can nerve himself to endure my style and my vulgarity for just half a minute he will find that I say:.
‘!I regard them both (Fascism and Communism) :as twin monsters . of our civilisation and, whilst one of them hns.possibilitigs,..rik be much happier to see them both doWn and out for good:".
26 Great James Street, London, W.C. 1.
• [Mr. Verschoyle writes : " If I had been reviewing Mr.
Beevers' book at greater length, I should have added incem- sistency to the list of qualities which I ascribed to him.
The - inconsistency in his attitude towards Coriimunism! is certainly not so great as that, fOr example, which permits him to print on one page a shrill denunciation of Scrutiny and all its works and cheerfully- to endorse Scrutiny's verdict on Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington. on another,
but nevertheless seems to me real and marked. The passage which Mr. Beevers quotes (of which incidentally I. was aware) comes from a lengthy and elaborate piece of self-extenuation which, to those cynical enough to remember arz old proverb about those who excuse themselves, seems the less con- vincing when it is taken together with, for example, many of the statements and most of the implications of his chapter on The -Machine. Nevertheless, if I have mis- interpreted Mr. Beevers' views, I am anxious to offer him an apology. But I must reassure him on the point of having read his book. I omitted only the chapter on Art, which I pursued only for the few pages necessary to verify his admission that he knew little about the subject."1
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