14 MARCH 1947, Page 5

Some instruction on Russia has reached me, in French, from

Paris, from an unknown critic. It is addressed to the writer of a review in the Spectator (in its Daily Mail phase) of Mr. W. C. Bullitt's recent book on Russia. "You ought," it runs, "to spend a month under Soviet rule. After you have had your bank balance and your pretty link. English house [in Russia?] confiscated, after your nails and your teeth have been pulled out, after your wife has been raped by ten Mongol soldiers in succession, after your children have died of hunger in a hermetically sealed railway van, then perhaps you will begin to understand." Well, Mr. Bevin is at present spending a month under Soviet rule. I trust he won't come home without teeth—or nails.