21 AUGUST 2004, Page 23
Scots empire-builders
From Eric Wilson Brown Sir: My congratulations to James Michie, surely a self-mocking closet Jock, on his witty poem (Friendly Fire', 14 August). It reminds me of a Flemish joke about their antipathy towards the Walloons:
Un Wallon dans La Meuse, c'est la pollution.
Tous les Wallops dans la Meuse, c'est la solution.
But where would England be without its Scots? Who really made the British empire? I trust that The Spectator is not too introspectively English to acknowledge this debt.
Eric Wilson Brown
Bromley, Kent