HIKING, WALKING AND STALKING
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Sia,—Mr. Hugh Sykes Davies, in his article on " Hiking and Politics " in your last week's issue, quotes my book, Under the.
Fifth Rib in support of the view that most hikers " belong to the Labour Party and profess Socialist opinions," and pro- ceeds to diagnose a sinister connexion between hiking and revolutionary Socialism. The explanation of the connexion is, in fact, very simple and only escapes. Mr. Sykes Davies because he shares the inability of most middle-class people to realize the importance of poverty to those who are poor. Most of those who belong to the Labour Party do so because they are poor and advocate Socialism because they believe that it will help to redress the present inequitable distribution of wealth. Similarly most of those who hike do so because they are poor and cannot afford to possess a car. Ergo, most hikers tend to be left-wing in politics because the same circum- stance has produced both their hiking and their politics.
I am unable to make up my mind whether Mr. Sykes Davies expects his suggestion that hiking is favoured because of its strategical revolutionary value in accustoming people to make " long marches in a straggling formation well adapted to avoid machine-gun fire from aeroplanes, &c. And, in the second place, it familiarizes the workers and their leaders with the countryside, a fact which might have very great tactical importance in a struggle with Government forces " to be taken seriously. I should like to think that he means it, if only because I should then be unable to deny myself the pleasure of asking him whether he thinks that rich men hire grouse moors in order to improve their marksmanship in preparation for the shooting of revolutionary Communists, and ride to hounds in order to prepare themselves for the hunting of escaped political prisoners. Hunting, it is obvious, affords the huntsman a first-rate knowledge of just the sort of country in which an escaped prisoner would be apt to hide. But my conviction that he is only, after all, pulling our legs and is probably already congratulating himself on the readi- ness with which I have risen to his bait, has determined me to forgo the pleasure of putting these questions.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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