OFFICERS AND PRIVATES
Snt,—Mr. St. John Ervine accuses Mr. Nicolson of in- accuracy; but are his own hands clean?
Referring to private soldiers being ordered out of restau- raro; by officers, he says that in the last war: "Never, during the whole period of my service, did I meet anybody who had either suffered this experience or heard of it being suffered by any private soldier known to him."
If this is correct, Mr. Ervine must have put these two questions to every single person he met during his period of service; and one is entitled to infer that so strange an idie fox wis based not on a bad dream but on something which had actually occurred.
On the other hand, if he intended to say merely that he never heard of it happening while he was a soldier, his argu- ment seems to lose its impressiveness, and (to quote Mr. Ervine again) "your readers have a right to know" why they are asked to assume that he would have heard of it, if it had
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