MARGINAL COMMENT
N ICOLSON By HAROLD
()last week's Spectator Sir Robert Greig contributed a letter in which he advocated the abolition of all titles. He contended
titles of nobility and chivalry had now become meaningless ; they perpetuated and emphasised class distinctions ; and that produced a most unfortunate impression abroad. I do not
with him. The only title which I should wish to see abolished silly suffix "Esquire," which is not merely inaccurate in but which entails the labour of deciphering or verifying the of the person to whom an envelope is addressed. I should taro all titles conferred up to and including this April 24th, 1942, I should confer no subsequent hereditary titles.. My reasons this desire are both sentimental and practical. I am one of the antics " who, as .Sir Robert pityingly implies, would regret " a with the colourful past." It would take but half a day of entary drafting to abolish the picturesque nomenclature which diversifies and enlivens our social life. It has taken many ies to build it up. And it seems to me no less silly to ask Duke of Devonshire to call himself "Mr. Cavendish" than it be to ask me to call myself " Earl of Hampshire." I do admit that such affections are romantic or snobbish. I con- that they display a balanced sense of history and proportion. wipe out the symbols of the past, even when such symbols have their efficacy, is to my mind an act of vandalism as serious destruction of a fourteenth-century building for the erection unicipal baths. Any town in the Middle West can construct "cipal baths even more lavish than those with which we regale cities ; but no town in the Middle West can boast a fourteenth- tury building. We should preserve our antiquities even when have become anachronisms.
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