letters to the editor . need to disperse immigrants . Sir , - while I fully endorse your attitude to the commonwealth immigrants bill , and am repelled by that section of its supporters who detergently echo the racialist slogan , keep Britain white , nevertheless I urge that the particular problem of immigrants from any source crowding into congested areas in London , Birmingham , and elsewhere must not be evaded . this does not at present affect my own constituency of Leyton , but there are other areas where immigrants can only find lodging under deplorable circumstances or by acquiring houses that could have been occupied by those who have been waiting for reasonable accommodation for many weary years . hospitality is an excellent virtue , but not when the guests have to sleep in rows in the cellar ! no wonder some returning immigrants have spoken bitterly of the wretched conditions under which they have been compelled to live , even if they forget that is the plight also of white brethren . surely , in the interest alike of our indigenous inhabitants and of immigrants who have made and can make a valuable contribution to our economic needs , it is imperative to enforce dispersal of newcomers to less congested areas and substantially to expand house-building . if this is not done reprehensible racial prejudice will , alas , be encouraged and mischievously exploited . - yours etc , R W Sorensen . house of Commons . polarisation of the labour party . Sir , - nothing could illustrate the polarisation of the labour party more aptly than the behaviour of Mrs Sylvia Brooks , who claims to be a member of the Hornsey labour party and bitterly attacks a speech I made as a guest speaker in Hornsey the other day . she attributes to me the words the worst country under socialism is better than the best country under capitalism , and then claims that the labour party will only flourish when it gets rid of people like myself who consider freedom relatively unimportant . fortunately the part of my speech to which she refers was reported in the Hornsey journal which quotes me correctly as saying : the last ten years have proved that the most backward totalitarian form of socialism is superior to the decadent type of capitalism we have in the western world . the only alternative to communism is democratic socialism with planning and freedom combined . the issue is whether we can get the people to see this in time . does Mrs Brooks think it really helps the labour party that she should seek to smear me by deliberate and malicious misrepresentation ? - yours truly , R H S Crossman . house of Commons . anomalies of the wage pause policy . Sir , - is not the government &apos;s failure to convince the nation of the necessity of the wage pause very largely due to its failure to present a policy with conviction , clarity , and imagination ? what , for example , is the plain man expected to make of the Prime Minister &apos;s recent forecast of a &amp;pound;20 minimum wage for the lowest paid workers in ten years &apos; time ; the undertaking by Lord Robens shortly afterwards that coal prices would not rise for five years ( broken this very morning ) ; and the Prime Minister &apos;s repeated warnings that the common market will demand real competitive pricing of our products - and all this in the context of a pay pause ? moreover , the plain man can not understand how the country &apos;s future can possibly depend upon a pause in the pay claims of the few . if , as is asserted , the pause is so vital to the country &apos;s economy , why not invite us all to share it ? indeed , why does not the government begin with a voluntary 10 per cent cut in the tax-free pay of MPs , as did the Churchillian government in the early days of the war ? the government , too , must make up its mind as to whether we need a stable economy or a fluctuating one , whether the cost of living is to continue to rise ( the promise of a &amp;pound;20 minimum ) or whether it should be stabilised , as it so easily could be . finally , the crux of this matter is surely not wages , but spending power . the higher income groups and those whose incomes are derived from sources other than wages are deliberately put outside this pause ; yet it is common knowledge that these groups , as groups , spend lavishly . for the present government to ignore this aspect of the situation is to create its own opposition on a far wider than party scale , and can only lead to a defeat of its own half-hearted appeals . - yours etc , S J Streek . Holmbridge Vicarage , near Huddersfield . Sir , - how silly can we get ? if the Treasury official really believes that money is in the bank of England just as jackets and raincoats are in the post office stores , waiting for the end of the pay pause , he ought to take some lessons in elementary economics . yours etc , Leonard Cohen . 112 Wythenshawe Road , Manchester 23 . BEA services in Scotland . Sir , - in the guardian of November 24 Lord Douglas is quoted as saying of the Toothill committee &apos;s report on BEA services in Scotland that for sheer ingratitude , this report is hard to beat . he is further reported as saying that the Scottish service is subsidised by the profitable BEA continental service , and that the best place for this section of the Toothill report is the waste-paper basket . I suspect that the waste-paper basket is Lord Douglas &apos;s filing cabinet for many good ideas which might be presented to BEA . but is it not the duty of a common carrier system which operates on a monopoly basis to provide adequate service to all parts of the country ? or are they only obliged to offer service where profitable to them ? is it not the nature of the business to offset the losses of one line with the profits of another ? and if Lord Douglas is so distressed about the loss incurred by the Scottish service , why has BEA been so reluctant to allow any other airlines an opportunity to provide service ? the attitude of BEA towards internal service is reflected in their London booking office . vast gleaming counters await the prospective continental traveller . the internal passengers need a native guide and the gods on their side to find the booking counter allotted to them . for Lord Douglas &apos;s information , Scotland extends beyond Edinburgh and Glasgow . there is Aberdeen , Inverness , Wick , and the islands . during the summer holiday season or new year holiday a passenger can get from London to Edinburgh with only a little difficulty . but farther north ? one has to book at least six weeks in advance . put on extra flights ? there &apos;s another idea for the waste-paper basket . yours faithfully , Mark Murray Threipland . Dale House , Halkirk , Caithness . deceived by Hitler ? Sir , - Mr R H S Crossman proclaims , in his article in Monday &apos;s issue of the guardian : the white-washing of Chamberlain is completed by the claim that he was never deceived by Hitler and never believed in the possibility of a general peace settlement with him . on Tuesday , March 23 , 1942 , the joint consultation board of standard telephone and cables held its fourth ordinary meeting . according to the minutes of that meeting , the visitor was Air-Commodore H Leedham , who , in the course of his talk , said that Chamberlain , on his return from Munich , requested that 20 RDF stations be established around the coast before the next April . it would seem , therefore , that Chamberlain did not trust Hitler ; if he did he would have been most unlikely to request the establishment of those stations . - yours faithfully , Paul D C Hudson . Exeter . a radical alliance . Sir , - may I , as an active liberal in my own constituency , sympathise most warmly with Mr R A Buchanan &apos;s plea for a liberal-labour election arrangement . in spite of post-Moss Side , post-Oswestry , and cosy liberal optimism it will be some years yet before the liberal party can form a government , while it is obvious that the unique event of a labour majority in the Commons is unlikely to be repeated . but what we need is not a Lib.-Lab pact but a new party ; not coalition but coalescence . is it too much to hope that the radicals , now sprinkled in all three parties , may one day be united and that the liberal party may find itself the anchor of a new radical alliance ? - yours sincerely , J Mackay Cousins , political Secretary Brentford and Chiswick young liberals . 33 Mayfield Avenue , Chiswick , London W 4 . letters to the editor . the bill for drugs . Sir , - if Mr Corina wishes to make two mutually exclusive propositions he will be well advised not to publish them in the same journal in the same month . on November 9 he states : since price restraint became operative the industry has won success in export markets . this must mean that he believes that the advent of price restraint in 1957 ( the voluntary price regulation scheme ) resulted in substantially increased drug exports after 1957 . but in his letter twelve days later he states : in the period 1957-59 the volume of exports fell by 1.2 per cent . at least one of the propositions must be incorrect . Mr Corina says that the Hinchliffe report showed quite clearly that between 1949-50 and 1959-60 the total cost of the health service rose by 80 per cent . I am unable to find this reference in the report - which is hardly surprising as it was published in 1959 and its latest reference to costs is in the financial year 1957-58 . what the Hinchliffe report does say on page 27 , paragraph 63 , is : these figures do not support the general belief that the cost of the pharmaceutical service is increasing at a much faster rate than that of other branches of the national health service or that it is absorbing an increasing share in the total cost of the service . if the rise in the drug bill is phenomenal the rise in the total health service bill must also be phenomenal , as both have gone up at much the same rate . however , in his recent book , health through choice , Dr D S Lees , senior lecturer in economics at the University College of north Staffordshire states : between 1949-50 and 1959-60 &amp;hellip; health expenditure fell as a proportion of social service expenditure from 28 per cent to 23 per cent , and as a proportion of gross national product from 4 per cent to 3.9 per cent . far from being extravagant , expenditure on NHS has been less than consumers would probably have chosen to spend in a free market . it therefore comes as no shock to read Dr Lees &apos;s conclusion on the drug bill : it would seem that much of the furore over drug costs has been misplaced . - yours faithfully , Ronald C Clark , Director Smith Kline and French laboratories , Ltd Welwyn Garden City . diplomacy and trade . Sir , - during extensive travelling in many parts of the world seeking export trade , I have often criticised the lack of facilities accorded to business men by some British embassies and our official commercial representatives in foreign capitals . for a change I would like to pay tribute to our embassies in Spain and Portugal for providing examples of just what can be done to foster British trade . I held receptions for leading figures in the motor industries in Spain and Portugal , and in both Madrid and Lisbon my efforts to promote new trade were actively supported by the British Ambassadors , who not only saw to it that my visits were widely known but personally came to the receptions and introduced me to useful contacts . in Spain , in particular , where 300 people attended a reception , there was official British representation at all levels , and I was immensely encouraged by the splendid effort made , particularly by our own British information service . indeed the joint effort between embassy personnel and first-rate Spanish agents demonstrated to me for the first time in my long experience just what 100 per cent co-ordination can achieve . surely what can be accomplished in Spain can be done by our embassies all over the world . - yours faithfully , Baron Rolf Beck , Chairman Slip group of companies . 