6 MARCH 1964, Page 16

Sta,—My thanks to David Rees for his level notice on

my book Mud Pie. But the book (though it is, as the introduction says, a brief survey of the anti- nuclear movement's public performance and impres- sion on the British public, rather than a treatise on doctrine) is not as short on ideas as he claims. Speci- fically, I do mention the danger of tempting Khrush- chev into a gambler's ploy and I say the criticism hasn't been answered (page 33).

Mr. Rees mentions Bevan in an anti-American con- text, not anti-nuclear. The movement was only in- cidentally anti-American, and I suggest why (page 105), I mention Bevan, though, in another context, on page 90:

Nye Bevan had also had doubts about 'the dismantling of the whole fabric of British inter- national relationships without putting anything in their place.'

I do trace the ideological history of the movement, both to the tradition of protest in Britain (page 103) and the pacifist movement (the whole first section), and later on I cite Christopher Driver's guess that the anti-nuclearites may be absorbed into the New Left.

However, Mr. Rees's review was not an emotional denunciation, and others have been, and I'm very grateful for that.

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