7 MARCH 1941, Page 10

"A MILD LEG-PULL"

IN last week's Spectator, under the heading " without Comment," there was published: (t) An extract from a leading article in The New Statesman and Nation, of January nth; (2) A paragraph from an article in Punch of January 29th by Mr. A. P. Herbert, quoting the extract in question as from The Bilious Weekly; (3) A paragraph from The New Statesman and Nation of February 22nd stating that The Spectator was the weekly thus characterised by Mr. Herbert.

The Editor of The New Statesman and Nation gave an explanation of this perversion of fact in a footnote to a letter by Mr. Herbert in last week's issue of that journal. Letter and footnote read as follows:

"THE BILIOUS WEEKLY" SIR,—Let me comfort you. When I write about The Bilious Weekly (an increasingly popular title) The Spectator is not the paper I have in mind. Nor did you suppose for a moment that it was, possessing as you do direct evidence to the contrary. You do not print my letter but twist and misrepresent it in a "comment." A small but, I say with regret, characteristic piece

of dishonesty. A. P. HERBERT. House of Commons.

[Without provocation Mr. Herbert indulged in a series of malicious attacks on us. Cannot he take it when we retort with a mild leg-pull?—ED., N.S. & N.] The following comments appeared in Time and Tide's " Diary " last week:

"Passing the buck is a fine Anglo-Saxon pastime—haven't we all enjoyed playing old maid' round the nursery table?—but I was rather startled to see the New Statesman trying to land The Spectator with the nickname Bilious Weekly the other day. Of course, I quite see that no paper would want to fit that jaundice-coloured cap on its own head, especially after all the entertainment Punch readers have been getting out of A. P. 11.'s 'Little Talks,' but wasn't it rather wildly optimistic to hope to divert attention to the other boy?

" The first time I came across that nickname was in Punch of January 29th, when A. P. H. was giving a Little Talk on what the comrades would like us to do about revolutionary propa- ganda. 'Listen to this now,' says the brighter, more A. P. II.-like interlocutor :

"As has often been argued in these columns, the war cannot be won without the encouragement of revolutionary movements in Europe, and they cannot be encouraged unless the promise Of a social and economic revolution is held out by this country" "'This country—mark you I ' " It sounds,' says his not-so-bright friend, like the Bilious Weekly.'

" ' Go up top. It's from a leading article in that great organ. . . ."

"I must admit that I chuckled. Although A. P. H. isn't always fair, his thrusts can be very funny. But that quotation rang a bell; I felt sure I had read those very words somewhere. So I started to look the passage up. But it wasn't among the files of The Spectator that I looked, but among the files of the New Statesman. I was right—there it was, January jith, in an article entitled 'What's Wrong with the B.B.C.? '

"It's a bit hard on the New Statesman to have one of those clinging nicknames fixed onto it, but nowadays one does some- times get up from reading it with that feeling that everything is for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds which is such a well-known symptom of a liver attack. There is, of course, the relief of Y Y's' weekly essay, which continues to shine steachif amid the encircling gloom but can't quite dispel it. One has to remember that gloom, too, has its function. Some near neigh- bours of mine, pillars, I should have thought, of Tory reactio°. have been taking the New Statesman lately as an antidote to national optimism. They were afraid they might get too cheer' ful. Well, they won't if they read their Statesman carefullf Indeed, if they have read the article and note in last week's issue on the huge obligations we are incurring in Abyssinia, coupleAl with sceptical hopes of our fulfilling them properly, they maY wishing we hadn't been so hasty about hustling the good, clvilised Italians out of their Ethiopian Empire."

There the matter can be left. There are more important subjects to occupy our space and our readers' attention