CANUTE AND THE WAVES
Snt,—Mr. R. H. Cecil in his excellent article Fun Factory in your issue of August 27th falls into the common error of attributing to King Canute a belief that he possessed superhuman powers. But surely the whole point of his action in sitting enthroned within reach of the waves was in order to prove the opposite. His loyal subjects thought he had divine powers, and assured him he had only to tell the sea not to wet his feet, and the tidal laws would be relaxed. Canute, wishing to disprove the theory, ordered his throne to be put on the seashore, and after telling the waves not to approach him, sat there until they overran him.
This all goes to prove how right Mr. Cecil is in suggesting that a library should be provided at the Holiday Camp, where he might have consulted a suitable history book and thus avoided doing injustice to
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