LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
" BRACED AND COMPACT ? "
Sta,—I have read with interest the letters last week on " Braced and Compact? " In particular, Mrs. W. R. Tarr's letter interests me as expressing the feeling of many younger women, but to my mind she fails to recognise either the cause or the cure of the trouble. All the faults she cites are well known to thoughtful people, our colonial greed, our social inequalities, our hypocrisy and many others. But so long as we are British we cannot dissociate ourselves from these faults simply by recognising them. A min who has a hot temper and admits it, cannot therefore claim that he is no longer responsible for it. Mrs. Tarr says that she has read much history and that it makes her ashamed. Much of it is indeed a matter' for shame. But there is no use stopping at the feeling of shame. We must go on to remember that the blood of the men who made this history is our blood. The merry, swaggering courage of the Elizabethans, the dour probity of the Puritans, the comfortable hypocrisy of the nineteenth century, these are in our blood quite as much as in our fathers'. Some of us recognise our grave national faults. Others will not or cannot. All of us are responsible. Do we need the horrors of a revolution in Britain to teach us to say OURS? We have to realise that only through our own efforts and those of our friends can the faults that shame us be eliminated. We are the British people. Without us Britain is a name emptied of content. If we do not shirk the implica- tions of this fact we can still build something worthy of the pride of our children, and we can still bring children into the world, perhaps not expecting ease or safety for them, but knowing that they them- selves would count these little in comparison with the joy of helping to build a better Britain.—Yours, &c., MARY MCKAY (MRS.). Pound Lane, Sevenoaks, Kent.
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