Stop this!
Sir: As a Canadian reader, I have two regrets about your otherwise excellent mag- azine. One is that so little appears in The Spectator about my own country. I am con- scious, however, that to many Englishmen Canada seems (if it seems anything at all) a dreary appendage of its closest neighbour. Canadians are, nevertheless, a robust lot and have little need to complain. Your other fault is not one that I have the right to forgive. You have developed the unChristian habit of inventing letters from Australia. These are clearly designed to hold that ego-challenged nation up to pub- lic ridicule.
The example which has caused me to write to you is the obviously faked, splenet- ic little letter of 7 February bearing the pseudonym Michael Kaufman. There can- not be any man in 'Mascot NSW' (really, you have overstepped the permissible bounds of satire) so desirous of parading his wounded Australian soul before your readers that he would concoct a letter revealing, once again, the burden of moth- er-loathing which oppresses that perpetual- ly jejune country. You should stop this unseemly contrivance.
Kenneth N. Affleck
3554 West 37th Avenue, Vancouver, Canada
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