Me and Jim I think I will join forces with
J. L. Manning of the Daily Mail. After all, he once joined forces with me when he stood as the Tory candi- date for Enfield East. The immediate cause of this new alliance is that the paragraph I had written on the vulnerability of Russian tennis players to minor ailments turns out to be almost the same as Jim Manning's column last Tuesday.
Unless all the tennis correspondents have gone blind, Toomas Lejas made no particular effort to win his match in Paris (he would have met Drysdale of South Africa in the next round) until a signal from the stand instructed him to win—and then scratch. Nor is this directed only at South Africa. The Soviet Union withdrew from their Davis Cup tie against Rhodesia be- cause all their good players were 'ill.' Not just one or even two, all of them. And the time has surely come to put an end to this farce. Not, of course, by giving way to the Soviet Union and (pace Llew Gardner) the long-haired, crew- cutted and bald meddlers. If you feed them South Africa and Rhodesia they will next develop blisters when they are due to play against Malaysia- or Pakistan or Spain or anywhere else that has earned their disapproval. To coin a phrase, Russia should 'belt up or get out.'
QUOODLC
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