SIR,—Pharos's remarks about Mr. A. F. J. Redda- way in
your issue of September 27 were ill-founded as well as ill-mannered. Among other things, Pharos described the Administrative Secretary of Cyprus as 'a man with so little colonial experience and such vigorously partisan views.'
As for his experience, he has served continuously in Cyprus, with one break, since early in the war. His one break was when he attended the Imperial Defence College for a year in 1954, when I was his fellow-student. There his views on Cyprus were naturally in demand; and I cannot in all my .life recall a more detached objectivity than he displayed, either then or at our two subsequent brief meetings of an hour or two last year and this.
It is an occupational hazard for a civil servant to be assailed for furthering the policy of the administration which he is serving, and to be unable to reply to such personal attacks. But if I were making a book on objectivity and non-partisanship, I would put my money on Reddaway versus Pharos any day in the year.—Yours faithfully, Old Park, Dover
BERNARD FERGUSSON
[Pharos writes: 'Brigadier Fcrgusson confirirs what I said about Mr. Reddaway's lack of colonial experi- ence. The post of Administrative Secretary of Cyprus is, at present. one of the most important in the Colonial Service, and one would have expected its holder previously to have been at the very least a Deputy Chief Secretary in some other important area. 'I am interested by what Brigadier Fergusson says about objectivity, but I should have thought that Mr. Reddaway's record in the last two years and in particular the extremely partisan circulars to which I referred were rather better evidence on this point than what he said at the Imperial Defence College in 1954.
It is not for me to express an opinion on the rather metaphysical question of whether I as a journalist e_tla more or less objective than Mr. Reddaway as a Livil Servant, but if Brigadier Fergusson ever does Make a book on this or any other contest he will tind that he is not required to put his money on anYbodY, but merely to shout the odds.'—Editor, S pectator
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