GENERAL TEMPLER
Sitt,-1 am reluctant to take up your space and to quarrel with Dr. Purcell, whom I found a most agreeable companion on the occasion of our only meeting. But his letter in your issue of March 19th seems so to shirk the points which he himself had raised that I must reply.
He begins by accusing Mr. Peterson and myself of answering in the Spectator his article in the Twentieth .Century. As far as I am concerned, my letter dealt solely with his own letter in your paper. He seems to suggest that we both based our defence of Jungle Green on the version after the author had modified it at his request.. But I read the book in proof, and found in it no excuse for all this pother.
Dr. Purcell avoids all the main points in my letter. They were: one, that if the British soldiers described in Jungle Green sometimes say insulting things about the Chinese, the reason is that well over 90 per cent. of the Communists they are fighting are Chinese. Two, that clauses in the Constitution detrimen- tal to the Chinese were none of General Templer's making; and three, that General and Lady Templer have encouraged every kind of organisation likely to bring the racial communities together, and that, without a Malayan patriotism, self-government in the Federation would be unhappy, perhaps disas- trous.
6 Gower Street, W,C.1 [This correspondence is now closed.—Editor, Spectator].
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