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I have thought for some time now-that there must exist, high up in the Home Office, a very hard-line man. The Rudi Dutschke affair supports my suppositions. The Home Secretary's decision to require him to leave the country, and the argument put forward to support that decision, do not strike me as all Reggie Maudling's own work.

The argument that if Dutschke is to re- main here, then he should have the normal privileges of everyone else, is an argument for removing his present conditions of residence and not for expelling him.

England is fortunate to possess a tradition of offering political sanctuary; and the possession of this tradition as much as possi- ble untarnished is far more valuable than any advantage which may be supposed to come from the expulsion of an unviolent young man who has epilepsy, among much else, to contend with.

If Dutschke is good enough for Dr Philip Abrams, present chairman of Cambridge University's Social and Political Sciences Committee (whose membership includes Mr Maurice Cowling, the SPECTATOR'S new Literary Editor), then I would have thought he was good enough for whatever grey eminence lurks within, or seemingly atop, the Home Office.

Philip Abrams tells me that 'the authorities' apparently fear that, even presuming Dutschke himself does nothing, he will by his presence inevitably become the leader to whom many would-be revolu- tionary students will look.

'But if Cambridge is ready to run that risk, why shouldn't the Home Office?' 1 asked Abrams.

'That's what we think,' he replied.

Rustic I

A few days ago I boarded a train at Col- chester, the train having come in from Norfolk and Suffolk. There had been a very sharp shower of rain.

'Is it raining here, then?' I overheard a woman, already well settled in her seat, ask a man whom I took to be her husband.

'Or maybe they've been washing the plat- form' he replied, flatly.

I knew he was not joking. He was a rustic, in best blue serge suit, brown pullover, vaguely tartan-patterned tie, very pink-gum- med false teeth. He and his wife were clearly travelling first class on a second-class ticket as indeed were two young chaps drinking brown ale out of the plastic beakers British Railways prefer to give than glasses.

Eventually the ticket-collector arrived, and demanded twelve shillings excess from these two young chaps, who argued belligerently for several minutes and then, still protesting, paid up. The old rustic man, throughout this minor scene, held his and his wife's second- class tickets in his hand, saying nothing.

The ticket collector, very narked at the young chaps, collected their money and moved on to the next compartment, having quite neglected to notice the rustic couple. When he had definitely departed, the man—who throughout the half-an-hour or so that I had been desultorily studying him had retained a face set as if in clay—sud- denly grinned hugely, exposing his bright pink gums and bright white teeth, filled with an immense delight that he had not had to pay the excess fares.

I knew then that I had been wrong thirty minutes before, when I thought that I knew that he had not been joking.

Rustic II

I dislike horses, and have made this clear on many occasions: foolish farting creatures admired mainly by fools. However, I am glad to join in the celebrations of a splendid example of regress. Suffolk's local brewery, Adnams of Southwold, have started up their brand new delivery service of beer barrels by drays. Percheron horses, they have con- cluded, are cheaper than lorries: and in Southwold, Blythburgh, Walberswick, Wangford and Wrentham the locals are now fortunate enough to get their beer pulled in by horse-power.

The firm's lorries have not exactly been put out to grass: instead, they will do the longer journeys, to places inaccessible on the hoof.

Thespian

I know nothing about ballet, I am pleased to say (althdugh years ago I once reviewed a ballet performance at the Library Theatre, Manchester, for the Manchester Guardian, which was not then bothered by its reviewers' credentials, and was damned near drowned in spit when the slight leading man tried to hoist aloft the hefty leading woman), but I am informed by our ballet critic, Mr Clement Crisp: 'Of all the companies in the world the one best suited to Natalia Makarova's gifts and ambitions is the Royal Ballet, but it is a troupe more than well stocked with ballerinas (particularly since the amalgamation of its two halves this sum- mer) and Equity is presumably in no hurry to grant permits to foreign dancers when native talent goes begging for work.

'The worst fate that could befall this

marvellous creature—and one must insist on her importance as a ballerina—is to become a touring "guest artist", moving from one company to another, cut off from the permanence of the classic roots that pro- duced her, involved in the inevitable round of Giselle and Swan Lake, and appearing in specially created "novelties" of variable merit—and just how variable she will discover when she learn§ of the dearth of good choreography in the west.

`Ultimately the "guest" would outweigh the "artist"; as her command of English in- creases Makarova will find that "going West" has two meanings—it would be an im- measurable tragedy for ballet if she became the victim of the freedom she has chosen.'

Non Sappho sed . . .

Such references to and reviews of Mrs Wilson's lately published verses have been predictably snide or bitchy or both. No one, least of all herself, would claim that Mary Wilson is a poetess (let alone a poet) of the first or even second rank; but her versifying is at times pleasing and disciplined, her observation can be sharp-eared, and the occasional revelation of her passion is honest.

People might do better, instead of fashionably carping and sniggering, to remark how rare it is to have an ex-Prime Minister's wife with the ability to express herself and the courage to do so.

When Quintin Hogg published his own, not dissimilar, verses, I do not recall a recep- tion half so supercilious or uncivil.

Happy ending

'It was a great coincidence when I got back', says Anthony Grey, 'that the SPECTATOR was the first periodical to ask me to review.'

In his Hostage in Peking Grey recalls receiving a cardboard box from the British Mission in Peking, after he had been held under house arrest for several months—'the one and only gift of any kind to reach me during the two years'. The box contained among books, sweets and chocolates. screwed-up pages of the Daily Telegraph and the SPECTATOR, camouflaged as stuffing. Grey wrote in his diary : 'Perhaps the most ex- citing things were the newspaper and magazine . . . There had been a Cabinet reshuffle and all the beauty and greatness of Britain flowed back to me as I read the SPECTATOR review of books, plays etc ..

Another coincidence of a kind, is that I was a reporter of those Hong Kong riots, the repression of which in the Crown Colony led the Chinese, by way of reprisals, to in- carcerate Anthony Grey as hostage in Pek- ing. I welcome him to these pages.

I bumped into Crux the other night after a television programme in which he had been, as is his wont, supporting Israel. I chided him gently and he replied, with that stagger- ing frankness which is one of his most en- gaging characteristics, that he had more Israeli than Arab readers.

There has been some speculation as to pseudonyms. Being opposed to coy puns, and not much caring for the declension Crux- Cruficer—(presumably) Crucifix, or Cruet- fixed, and like nonsense, it seems to me to be altogether preferable to sign myself.

The SPECTATOR