3 OCTOBER 1958, Page 22

PURGING INTELLECTUALS •

SIR,-1 do not want to trouble you further, but the letter of Mr. Arden does seem to me to prove my case. He honestly cannot conceive of a man being keen to do an important and interesting piece of work which has nothing to do with the propaganda line of Mr. Arden. I suggested that Mr. Arden might have made a mistake out of my goodness of heart, because that would excuse him from having made a false accusation against me; but, no. he positively boasts that his accusation, was profoundly right, though, of course, not literally true; it was a Proper Smear and I ought to regard it with reverence. It strikes me that these Western propagandists have already got into an alarmingly totalitarian frame of