19 JUNE 1909, Page 16

To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—God forbid that England

should put her trust in outside aid :—

"Nought shall make us rue If England to itself do rest but true."

Still, when I read Mr. John Temple's letter in your issue of June 5th I could not but recall the words of Tom Hughes in the Boston Music-Hall, October 11th, 1870, when the ashes of the Civil War were yet hot, and he was putting the case of England in his manly, straightforward way :- " If the strong old islander, who, after all, is your father, should happen one day to want a name on the back of one of his bills, I, for one, should not wonder to hear that at the time of presenta- tion the name Jonathan is found scrawled across there in very decided characters."—(" John to Jonathan," Macmi/ian's Magasine, December, 1870.) Eversley,