SIR,—Mr. Waugh grows more and more lir e ; some. Bearing in
mind the well-known storY the death of Kingsley, one is tempted to saY' 'Who would have thought we should hat,c regretted poor Belloc so soon'! Mr. WaUP ought not to attempt to do now what Chester Belloc with their lucid prose, common se0,se, and giant humour did twenty years ago. really is not able. If Richard Southwell beg: a martyr's crown, he does not need the weeatl: of weeds which Mr. Waugh has woven 0°' of half a dozen major howlers about the Reformation and Hugh Latimer. A genelx tion ago Chester-Belloc were effective la propagandists, to whom some of us owe tie immeasurable debt for our intellectual salva; tion from the siren-like voices of Shaw an Wells. Now the effective lay apologetic has, slipped from Rome down the ecumenic? ladder until it is now past the Anglo-Catholics and well among the Nonconformists. Mr' Waugh had really better leave these things,te the Jesuits. They will have the wit to perceive that this kind of 'Of course no Catholic ev,ee believed anything of the sort—of course We ChuA has never said . . .' gambit breeds, only a very large sales-resistance. The real attractiveness of Rome to a new generati0.11 is surely its beguiling vagueness and aMb!' guity at every point of importance. That 15, why the old Methodist preacher in Irel000 was so wise to carry with his Bible and hymn book a copy of the decrees of the Council of Trent. As the hymn writer se) nearly said, we'll
'Hang the trumpet in the hall And study Waugh no more.'
—Yours faithfully,
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