GENERAL PILE
Sin,—Captain Nevile Wallis's tribute to General Sir Frederick Pile is well deserved. I can endorse it because many years ago I had the honour and privilege of " instructing " Tim Pile at the Staff College, . and he still maintains that I reported adversely on his qualifications as an officer, if not as a' gentleman. But in his reference to General Pile's appearance at that dinner in the House of Commons, Captain Wallis misses the real point. Having scarified the M.P.s about the lack of guns and lack of men, Tim Pile demanded that they did something about it. And after a division, which inopportunely called them away for ten minutes or so, he suggested that they formed a small committee to help him in recruiting for the ist Anti-Aircraft Division. So was formed the Territorial Army Public Interest Committee, which ultimately became the National Defence Public Interest Committee.
The chairman -at the House of Commons dinner was Lord Nathan of Churt, then Coi. H. L. Nathan, M.P. for Central Wandsworth, and General Pile promptly nominated him as the chairman of the Committee. Shortly after its formation I became its secretary, and it is highly gratify- ing to know that General Pile still remembers some of its varied activities before the war, among then the first public demonstration of our anti-aircraft defences in Hyde Park and a visit of M.P.s to one of his camps at Watchet in Dorset, at which, to his surprise but great delight, a newly-arrived Territorial unit brought down a Queen Bee, at a cost to the Government of some L3,000, for our delectation. It is this Committee which this week is entertaining General Pile to lunch, first as " father " of the National Defence Public Interest Committee, secondly to congratulate him on his great work in Anti-Aircraft Command, and thirdly to wish him well in his new job as master-builder-in-chief in the new drive to provide houses for the people.—I have the honour to be,
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