SIR, --May I contribute a word or two of com- ment
on Mr. Sparrow's magisterial rebuke to Mr. Blake?
Whether or not the latter's account of the Manner in which this totally unnecessary con- troversy has been conducted is wholly accurate, it is certainly more convincing than Mr. Sparrow's. The cosy picture of broad-minded scholars tolerantly examining the other fellow's point of view in the good-humoured atmosphere of the common rooms is not one Which those fortunate enough to be personally acquainted with any of the participants arc likely unreservedly to accept; even from the Warden of All Souls, whose high conception of impartiality has been so regularly demon- strated on the air and in the press. University life may well have changed in the last twenty- live years, but it cannot, one feels, have Changed that much!
Nevertheless this exchange of .views may achieve a certain historical importance as evidence of the great trahison des clercs which Paved the way for the final ruination of Oxford. Could the university from the start have presented a united front in support of the Only rational policy, that of resolutely refusing to consider any inner relief road until the outer by-pass was completed, Oxford might Well have been preserved, battered but intact, and the traffic problem finally solved. As it is. a million or so of the public funds are likely to be wasted on a scheme which may well prove as inadequate a relief to traffic conges- i„i" as that other controversial half-measure, Lambeth Bridge, which, by inducing in the
public authorities the erroneous but comfort- ing conviction that something has been accom- plished, will postpone indefinitely the building of the outer by-pass, and which is highly unlikely to bring the dream of a High Street closed to traffic one step nearer realisation.
' We can only hope that when the new round- about in St. Giles comes to be built a space in the centre, laid out in the most expensive style of municipal gardening, will be reserved for the eventual interment of Mr. Sparrow and his fellow ward bosses beneath a simple slab bearing the inscription 'Si monumentum requiris eircumspice.'—Yours faithfully,
OSBERT LANCASTER
Leicester House, Henley-on-Thames. Oxfordshire
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