WELFARE CHILDREN
SIR,—I had hardly hoped that my remarks on emotional double-think in public, apropos 1984 and Miss Kendon's article, would have evoked so perfect a specimen of the genre itself as Mr. Frank Littler has kindly supplied. Observe the method. Paragraph I recaps my minor argu- ment (carefully ignoring the major one of emotional fallibility) and dishes it up in
rhetoric for a mild titter. Paragraphs 2 and 3 charm the reader with choleric colonels' prejudices (why?), and desiderate three-line letters. (Mr. Littler runs to seventy). Para-
graphs 4, 5 and 6, having run the main argu- ment nicely off the rails, inquire whether I have ever seen anyone buying a Mickey Spillane book (irrelevant, though in fact I have), inform me that there are no boxing stadia near the dew estates (I never said there were, though I presume fans can run to a bus fare), and claim that modern gangster films aren't a patch on their predecessors, which I never denied. After which the reader is left scratching his head and wondering what it's all about.
Now there isn't a scrap of logic in this letter; but emotionally it's a honey. If you aren't careful you end up feeling that colonels' letters and honest-to-god prejudice are a jolly good thing; and you've certainly forgotten what the argument was all about. My thanks to Mr. Littler for offering himself as such a will- ing guinea-pig.—Yours faithfully, PETER GREEN
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