5 FEBRUARY 1954, Page 7

Pot-Shot at a Proconsul Vindictive seems to me the only

epithet with which to describe the attack made on General Sir Gerald Templer by Mr. Victor Purcell in this month's Twentieth Century. Mr. Purcell, a former Principal Adviser on Chinese Affairs and Director-General of Information in Malaya, feels strongly that the duties entrusted to General Templer should never have been given t6, a soldier in the first place; he also believes (and is of course fully entitled to say so publicly) that General Templer discharges these duties by methods so autocratic, so tactless, so lacking in vision and even in humanity that his energetic but misguided endeavours are steering the country inexorably towards " a gigantic political