I think therefore he's not
Sir: Alfred Sherman's first letter was silly, but his second (21 September) is simply preposterous. He seems to think that before criticising what he wrote, I should have made enquiries about his holidays in `Dinaric Yugoslavia'. I was replying to his letter, not writing a profile. Did he make any such enquiries about your leader writer or your correspondent Mr Frei before describing them as ignorant and preju- diced? Of course not. I do not know whether he is referring to such elaborate preparations when he talks about 'the ele- mentary courtesies of debate'. Perhaps he just means that one should express criticism in phrases of delicate politeness as he so notably did when he accused Mr Frei of `crippling ignorance'.
Sir Alfred has clearly not understood what I wrote about his a priori argument, so there is little point in repeating it here. I presented factual evidence which disproved that argument; he appears to accept it, but carries on regardless. If Mr Frei did not know this simple fact (i.e. the original meaning of the word `Chetnik')', he asks, `how reliable can he be?"If, indeed: and who says that he did not know it? Only Sir Alfred, whose argument now amounts to saying, 'If I was right, then I was right'.
Next: 'Had Malcolm read my letter with minimal care, he could not have said that I claimed the border dated back to 1871.' But that is precisely what he did claim. He first of all referred to 'the boundaries between the 'republics' (i.e. what your leader-writer had called their 'borders'), and then criti- cised 'your prescription of allowing no changes in the present boundaries dating back to 1871'. Those are his exact words, and it is preposterous of him to deny their plain and evident meaning. Now, in his sec- ond letter, he says that the border 'survived 1871'. He still does not say what it is that he thinks happened in that magic year, but never mind. Although we all make mis- takes, it takes a special kind of silliness to repudiate one's error and compound it at one and the same time.
The more tiny the point at issue, the more absurd he becomes. He says that he did not use the Serbian plural of `zadruga' because he was following Fowler's rules; yet according to Fowler's rules the plural is `zadrugas', which is not what he wrote. If he re-reads my letter with any degree of care whatsoever, he will see that I did not argue that because he mis-spelt a German word, he must be ignorant of Serbian. The point I was making, and which I must now spell out a little more clearly for Sir Alfred's benefit, was that if one is going to present oneself as a great expert and accuse others of crip- pling ignorance, one should not do so in a letter which is itself riddled with errors both
LETTERS
large and small.
But Sir Alfred's masterpiece is his claim that Croatia does not exist — which won- derfully simplifies the problem. Is this a technique of argument which anyone can use? If so, may I state my firm, nay, fervent belief in the non-existence of Sir Alfred Sherman?
Noel Malcolm
6A Huntingdon Street, London Ni
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