SOCIALISM AND LIBERTY
SIR,—Mr. Hudson's views on socialism are his own affair, but in his comments on my book, The Triple Challenge, in your columns last week, he makes a charge against me personally, at once so reckless and so serious that I cannot let it pass. He writes that my book shows : " The Socialists expect that everyone will co-operate in working for the Socialist Government. If people are unwilling, compulsion and even physical force will be used." If words have any meaning these can only mean that Mr. Hudson alleges that I advocate and support compulsion and physical force as instruments of political policy.
You, Sir, if not Mr. Hudson, will realise the gravity of such a charge against a political writer. Not only would it mean, if it were believed, that after devoting the major part of my political life to opposition to the Fascist and Communist doctrines of government by compulsion and physical force I had now, in this, the most fundamental issue in the world today, transferred to the totalitarian side, but that I publicly advocated—or threatened—the use of physical force against opponents of socialism in this country. I find it difficult to conceive of a charge which, if it were accepted, would be more damaging, and rightly so, to my reputation, and which would more justly deserve the distrust and dislike of all those to whom my writings on political matters have been directed.
It is not, I think, necessary for me to say that there is not one word of truth in Mr. Hudson's allegation. Indeed, at least two chapters in The Triple Challenge are devoted to attacking both politically and morally the totalitarian doctrine of compulsion and to expressing my conviction that the democratic principles of -toleration and freedom of opposition represent absolute values which must be maintained and defended at all costs. But the reckless nature of Mr. Hudson's charges does not reduce their seriousness when they are published in a journal rightly so influential and so widely read as The Spectator. I must ask him therefore to sub- stantiate them without delay—which is impossible—or apologise.—Yours
42 Gordon Square, W.C.i
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