Letter, F. Ottley to a newspaper, declining a statement of position

Dear Mr Halliwell,

You ask for three hundred words setting out the position of the Institute. I am sorry to say that I cannot supply them, and I should like to explain why at greater length than the request deserves.

We have no position. We have procedures, which I enclose; accounts, which are printed in full and which I also enclose; and a number of people who hold quite different views about what the whole thing is for and who say so to each other on Thursdays. If I were to write you three hundred words, the Institute would have a position by the end of the week, and would spend the next twenty years defending it. I am not willing to be the cause of that.

What I can offer you is better. The Open Table at the North House is on the first Thursday and you may come to it. You will be fed and nobody will ask you anything. You may speak to whomever will speak to you, and you may print what they say, and I would ask only that you do not print their names without asking them, which I imagine is your practice in any case.

You will find it dull. That is not a defence; it is a description.

Yours sincerely,

F. Ottley

Correspondent