2 SEPTEMBER 1922, Page 17

THE INEFFICIENT SERPENT AND THE SOPHISTICATED DOVE.

[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—In the Spectator of August 12th, a propos of war guilt, you say truly that " our good intentions and our unwillingness to face disagreeable facts " (two things which in this case also spell non-aggressiveness) were what constituted the true danger. This characteristic of ours has been admirably put in that fine book Disenchantment—reviewed by you some months ago —where the author, Mr. C. E. Montague, remarks that our tendency to half-thinking merely means " combining the short- comings of an inefficient serpent with those of a sophisticated