6 DECEMBER 1963, Page 15

SQUASHED

SIR,—While I am grateful to your reviewer, Mr. David Watt, for his few kind words in your issue of October 18 about my little book on the early diamond fields in South Africa, I should have been more so if he had not sandwiched me into the middle of a long article on Rhodes.

It makes me feel as Jonah must have felt when in the whale; and as Voltaire remarked of my dis- tinguished predecessor: 'Quota on a ete dans le corps dune baleine on nest pas de si bonne humeur que quand on a etc d l'opera,l, la comedic et qu'on a soupe en bonne cornpagnie.'

OSWALD DOUGHTY