[As the nearest available Imagist, perhaps I may be permitted to comment (without prejudice to the other Imagists) on Mr. Carter’s letter. I am not quite sure that I know what Mr. Carter means, but I think he means that it is useless for a man to study classic quantity and mediaeval rhyme and modern free verse, if he has no particular impulse or mood to make those studies valuable as a means of expression. If that is what Mr. Carter means I agree with him. I will also agree that it is useless to try and teach a dumb man to lecture or a lame man to break the hundred yards record. If a man is to lecture, if he is to be an athlete, we take for granted that in the first case he has ideas and a certain eloquence, and in the second a good physique and an aptitude for sprinting. Mr. Carter would be a rotten trainer if he didn’t make his man diet, take cold baths and long walks and an occasional sprint; he ought even to make him do a little boxing. I feel, somehow, that Mr. Carter never went in for violent exercise or that he relied upon his “Soul-Flow” or “Art-Ebb” to get him through. Now poetry is not so very unlike athletics. You may have no aptitude for it, and then all the training in the world won’t get you in first; you may shape very well, but if you don’t train you will be an “also ran.” I believe in having an aptitude and in training it; Mr. Carter believes in having an aptitude and not training it. I object to Mr. Carter informing us of the existence of our “of courses.” We take for granted that a man is sincere, that he has lots of impulses and that he is “free.” All that is the stuff out of which poetry is made. The making of it, the “training” is what we are immediately interested in. We take for granted that we have the essentials of poetry in us or we should not attempt to write it. We are now after clarity of form, precision of expression. Mr. Carter, like the majority of our fellow citizens, does not value these things; we find them present in every work of art which is beautiful and permanently interesting; hence our anxiety to attain by practice that clarity and that precision which practice alone can give.] RICHARD ALDINGTON.