16 APRIL 1937, Page 21

A NOTE ON INTELLECTUALS [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]

Snt,—Your novel reviewer, Miss E. B. C. Jones, blames the French author of Trojan Horse for making a railwayman and a small shopkeeper talk like " working intellectual Com- munists." But that is exactly what they are.

Does Miss Jones think that an " intellectual " must be middle-class and have gone to Oxford or Cambridge, and belong to the professional class ? I can assure her that among my friends and acquaintances, not alone in France but here, are many men and women in the " working-class milieu " despised (intellectually) by Miss Jones who talk with the knowledge and acuteness displayed by Mr. Nizan's characters.— HAMILTON FYFE.