IN VIEW of the recent correspondence in the Spectator as
to whether or not the questions in the News Chronicle's Gallup poll were 'angled,' I was amused to find what seemed another flagrant instance in last Tuesday's Chronicle. The question was: 'What do you think is the best way of avoiding a future world war?'—fair enough, but the answers were divided into three categories: 'Military measures,' Negotiations and other non-military measures' and 'Don't know.' Not unnaturally there was an even greater majority than in January, 1952, for negotiation, and this was used as evidence for the statement in the commentary that 'people in this country are turning away from armaments as the best way of avoiding a world war.' Well, so they may be, for all I know, but the Gallup poll does not prove it
for me. The course which is completely ignored as a possible answer, but which, since nobody but a lunatic believes in armaments for their own sake, is the real alternative to pacificism, is to continue to arm, while simultaneously negotiating with the Soviet Union. This, apparently, never occurred to the innocent pollsters—any more, I suppose, than the suspicion that to present 'military mea- sures' as incompatible with negotiation was to prejudice the whole issue from the start.
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