11 JANUARY 1957, Page 8

A CORRESPONDENT, agreeing with me that apposite-quotation collecting has become

a con- temporary pastime, offers the following from Karl Marx (I like to think of it turning up on one of those 'A Saying a Day' calendars, if they have such things, in Russia): The times of that superstition which attributed revolutions to the ill-will of a few agitators have long since passed away. Everyone knows nowa- days that wherever there is a revolutionary con- vulsion, there must be some social want in the background, which is prevented, by outworn institutions, from satisfying itself.