27 OCTOBER 1961, Page 15

SIR,—Before the point is entirely forgotten, may I go back

to the beginning of this correspondence? Mr. Correlli Barnett set up a mythical reviewer-gang member as a target for his sarcasm; one of the things wrong with this fellow is that he would criticise Larteguy for not appreciating—what the myth-figure does, absurdly, believe—'that cruelty is twice as vile when perpetrated by his own country- men as by Arabs or Asiatics.' May I say that the belief that our side ought to behave better than the other is precisely what 1 do hold, that I do believe that cruelty perpetrated by my own countrymen is twice as vile as cruelty perpetrated by our enemies, that that is the reason why I am on our side and not theirs, and that I am astonished, and dismayed, that there should seem to be any need to say this?