Obituary: Lord Devlin

I SHOULD like to add a few sentences to James Morton's splendid obituary of Lord Devlin (11 August), writes Patrick Cosgrave. Naturally, Mr Morton concentrated on Devlin's legal career, but he also mentions Devlin's book on Woodrow Wilson, Too Proud to Fight.

The title comes from a speech by Wilson, in which the President of the United States declined to enter the First World War on the side of the United Kingdom and France. Devlin's book is - apart from being a superb panorama of the times - the best analysis of a legal and philosophical mind at work on the problems on international relations. Wilson was a natural pacifist; but he went to war in the end. Devlin's book, more acutely than any other, tells us why.

It should be required reading for our politicians today.