15 MAY 1959, Page 9

A COUPLE OF CORRESPONDENTS tell me they were puzzled by

my reference to 'paid-up' MAs last week: was there, they ask, some gibe intended? There was. Most MAs are won by examination; at Oxford and Cambridge they are simply pur- chased. Nobody, so far as I know, has ever tried to justify this system; but it continues. But now that Oxford is at last contemplating leaving Latin off the list of compulsory Responsions subjects, there is room to hope that they will end the buy- ing of MAs, some time in the next hundred years.

PHAROS