No chapter, mi verse
Sir: In the Spectator's review (February 16), of a book called The Anderson Papers, I read that "thirty years after Pearl Harbour, President Richard Nixon brought the United States to the edge of another world war."
This statement is quoted from the book which is being reviewed, but the reviewer obviously accepts it as truthful. The author of the book, apparently, describes himself as a muckraker. The value to the community of a member of this profession depends on the authenticity as well as on the prima facie importance of his trouvailles.
That the President of the United States should have been responsible for provoking, in 1972, an international crisis more acute even than the Cuban crisis of 1963, or than the one that last November, caused the American nuclear armaments to be alerted is a matter that would surely be of very great interest to your readers and to large sections of the British public which are bored to death by the sub
ject of Watergate and the whole American popular sport of Nixon-baiting.
But, for statements of such importance, more of us than you, Sir, perhaps would imagine like to be given chapter and verse and this is just what the modern journalist — and, in this respect, your reviewer Mr Larry Adler, is no exception — appears to be trained to avoid doing.
T. C. Owtram Villa Belvedere, 55010 Gragnando (Lucca)
Previous page
