OXFORD AND MR. A. P. HERBERT
[To the Editor of TILE SPECTATOR.] Your Oxford Correspondent " should be told that his remarks on Mr. Herbert's election to Parliament are offensive, not only to Mr. Herbert (which presumably was intended), but also to the large number of electors who happen to admire the independence, vigour and practical good sense of Mr. Herbert's intelligence.
It is an ironic commentary on the pundit-mentality which broods over British politics, that alike from the right and the left Mr. Herbert is lectured with contempt or solemnity on his success at the polls. At the moment when " Your Oxford Correspondent " was dismissing the outcome of the election as a snatch-victory for University frivolity, Mr. Herbert himself was replying in the columns of another paper to a lofty exhortation from a Socialist friend to give up all this nonsense about making ordinary people happy, and concentrate on the nobler ideals of which the SocialiSt party albite have the secret. Mr. Herbert's admirable rejection of this rather impertinent advice would, with very little alteration,' serve as answer to your correspondent and his kind.
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Distressing though it may be to the superior persons whit; interpret the duty 'of government 'in home affairs as a mixture of moral pomposity and conciliation of various vested interests, there are a large number of people who actually regard Mr. Herbert as a " man ' of intellectual eminence," and respect him the more for his courageous challenge to repressive puritanism and party-arrogance. These disreput- able creatures, with ar full sense of responsibility, voted for him. Hence his victory.---Yours, &c.,
SADLEIR.
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