The - British Council SIR,—Tho Marginal Comment in your issue of
March 28th has given pleasure and encouragement to the staff of the British Council. I write to express our !thanks for such generous recognition of the service which wo try to give our country. But Mr. Nicolson has done more than pat our backs. He turns a spotlight on the unjust and misleading nature of the Press campaign which has been directed against us, and by his article creates a climate in which the subject of " cultural relations " may be fairly and opportunely aired. This is surely long overdue.
The fact that the British Council's trumpet is not often blown in public is not what we deplore. We like our work, and we benefit by criticism. But a " smear campaign " is not criticism. It prevents informed criticism by obscuring the facts, by removing events from their context and by making fiction of reality. Those Members of Parliament and others who, like Mr. Nicolson, have been able to see things for themselves abroad have generally reached conclusions widely different from those put out by some sections of the popular Press in its prop.anda against the Council. But their voice is too rarely heard.
The British are by nature reserved, and our " cultural relations," like the don in Belloc's verse, are popularly regarded as " remote and ineffectual." We know, however, that the roots of our free world's civilisation are in danger. Britain's part is to' sustain and nourish those roots, which are found wherever there are men and women with open and enquiring minds. At present the supply abroad of information about Britain falls lamentably short of the demand. Parliament and the public should know this. Elsewhere in the world budgets are expanding to meet this kind of need, yet the British Council's budget for work in foreign countries has been steadily reduced by four succes- sive cuts in five years. The amount of money available is now little more than half what it was in 1948, and the cut in services is propor- tionately greater because of the rise in costs. The libraries which Mr. Nicolson saw abroad, crowded with young people reading British books and papers, will be less well stocked this year. Some of these readers may turn elsewhere, disappointed.
You, Sir, have provided an opportunity for these matters to be made known, which rejoices the hearts of those Who, in their daily work, are concerned in them. On their behalf I write with gratitude.
—Yours faithfully, • M. J. CiRAEAM-JONES, Chairman, Staff Side, British Council Joint Staff Committee. 65 Davies Street, W.1.
SIR,—As one who has had the honour of lecturing for the British Council; before, during and after the war, in almost every European country (including those that have since descended to satellite status), in Asia, and in Aftica, I beg to endorse, strongly and from long and close first-hand observation and experience, Mr. Harold Nicolson's enthusiastic (and justly indignant) tribute to the Council's conspicuous and acknowledged service to the highest British interests wherever they have operated.—Yours sincerely, RONALD STORRS. Travellers' Club, Pall Mall. S.W.1,
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