MR. PRITT'S OMISSIONS
SIR,—Though I have not yet read Mr. Pritt's book, I feel sure that, like your reviewer Mr. Harris, I should disagree with many of the opinions expressed in it. Nevertheless the review struck me as unfair. For instance, Mr. Harris scoffs at Mr. Pritt because the latter avers (a) that the House of Commons is tenanted by sinister capitalists and (b) that the capitalist world has always been hostile to the Soviet Union.
Few thinking persons would disagree with Mr. Pritt on those points, and it is obvious that Mr. Harris has omitted to read two books of importance—The Town That Was Murdered and Tory M.P.—Yours, &c., T. S. BaRTLErr.
Thornton, Sherborne, Dorset.
[Mr. Wilson Harris writes : There was no question of " scoffing " at Mr. Pritt. I simply commented on the fact that while Mr. Pritt dwells on " capitalist representation " in the House of Commons, he says not a word about the still more direct representation of manual labour in that Chamber, and that while he condemns propaganda in this country against the Soviet Union, he is completely silent about the much more active and virulent propaganda against this country in the Soviet Union. But I should like to take the opportunity of correcting one injustice which I did un- wittingly do to Mr. Pritt. When I said he had omitted to inconvenient sentence in a passage which he was quoting from a recent book by Sir Ernest Simon I was basing myself on a statement to that effect by Sir Ernest himself in a letter in the Manchester Guardian. The fact appears to be that Sir Ernest used practically identical sentences on successive pages of his book and that he thought Mr. Pritt was quoting the one (which was followed by the words alleged to have been omitted), whereas in fact he was quoting the other.]
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