GALLUP POLL SIR,—For three or four weeks consecutively you have
attacked various aspects of our polls. We have shown that there was no substance in any of your complaints. Now you play the move usual in such circumstances, you shift your ground and attack the News Chronicle.
Their headline to our poll findings, 'More pin hopes on talks, not bombs,' you complain, was ridiculous. Contrary to what you say, it was an apt summary of what had happened. We asked exactly the same question in 1952 as now. At that time more wanted military measures than wanted talks. We ask the question five years later and we find a very marked shift; more want talks than want military measures. Why is a headline summarising this shift 'ridiculous'?
May I supply the background to all this fuss and bother on your part, since you, yourself, seem to be willing to bring it into the open? It is really very simple. You do not like opinion polls, especially you do not like them sounding, out the public's attitude on difficult problems such as international affairs.—Yours faithfully, HENRY DURANT Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Limited, 59 Brook Street, Mayfair, WI [This letter is referred to in 'A Spectator's Note- book.'—Editor, Spectator.]
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