SIR,—T was roving round SE Asia for a year up
to and covering the Dien Bien Phu disaster and can bear Mr. Graham Greene out in saying that General Salan as commander on the snot was innocent of policy decisions and was never the target of criticism among French paratroops or their officers, among whom 1 had many friends. But in fairness to Mr. Churchill we should annre- ciate the impossibility facing the corresnondent rushed from London to assess the feelings in countries where his stay is short and where he has had no time to learn the local tongues (in this case Arabic, French and Berber in that order).
There is another difficulty. Since English has ceased to be the lingua franca both in Africa and in SE Asia (save for jejeune commercial conversa- tion) and since the mass circulation press has fallen into disrepute in places east of Suez as well as west of Temple Bar, young Asia and young Africa delight to pull the legs of rush-round correspondents. To cite two instances: there was that gossip-writer on a mass-circulation London Sunday sheet who was informed and who recorded and believed that monkey's brains, beaten out of the living animal, were served at banquets in Queen Astrid's Park. a most reputable street of six houses in suburban Singapore; again, once for a bet, some Chinese schoolboys sold a Malayan sensation sheet the story of a missing link who had been walking round the Federation. Some foreign correspondents lamed this up and it was featured both in Britain and in the USA.
'Tell it to the foreign corresnondent' is the equivalent of 'Tell it to the Marines' among mis-
chievous youth, including British youth, in Asia and all over Africa today.
Mr. Churchill is a high-spirited, stimulating and gifted writer on the internal politics inside the British Isles, especially within the Tory Party. Is he expected to emerge (could any man?), and overnight, as expert on the Arab world from Fez to Muscat?—Yours faithfully, 14 Great Ormond Street, WCI GEORGE EDINGLR
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