[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I will not presume
upon the hospitality of your columns in any vain attempt to hammer some intelligence into Mr. F. 0. Taylor's head. A man who can compare the " Cat " to a schoolboy caning is capable of comparing boiling alive in oil to the application of a linseed poultice, and it would obviously be a waste of time to try to explain to him that the case against lashing has no connexion whatever with sympathy for the criminal's feelings.
But I have recently had an experience of the extraordinary wave of-sadistic lust which has swept over the country in connexion with the Mayfair case. A recent letter of mine in the Daily Telegraph his brought me a number of abusive letters of quite astonishing virulence from apparently educated and cultured themberi of the upper classes, including several women, who are quite beside themselves with fury at the idea of being • deprived of further floggings about which they obviously are genuinely delighted to read and talk.
This debasing of our people and lowering of our civilised standards should cause us the greatest concern, especially at a moment when we should all keep our heads- in face of the brutality which dominates so much of, the international stage. If this lust for cruelty is to spread, it cannot fail to create in us just that mentality which makes for Schrecklichkeit and war, with the ruin of our culture and spiritual damnation which must inevitably follow in its wake.—Yours faithfully,
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