10 APRIL 1959, Page 7

FOR THE GERMANS of all people to accuse Mr. Macmillan

of wanting to do another 'Munich' is a little indelicate, but their accusations and those of the Americans, silly as they are, may do one good thing. For years anybody in this country who has suggested negotiations or concessions in the Middle or Far East as part of the normal routine of diplomacy has been denounced as an appeaser and a Municheer—often by people who sup- ported and still support what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich. What was dishonourable about the the Exchequer has gone to ground with his Budget Munich agreement was that Britain and France— secrets. . . . A year ago the Chancellor was behind the back of the Czechs—agreed to give to appalled at the publicity given to his pre-Budget Hitler a slice of Czechoslovakia. Nobody has sug- culinary exploits—boiled egg for breakfast, fried gested doing anything comparable either in the sausages for lunch in his Westminster bachelor's Far East or in the Middle East, but that has poi prevented noisy politicians and publicists making inaccurate and emotive comparisons. Now that Mr. Macmillan has been subjected to similar accu- sations over Berlin—most unfairly in that he is not a Municheer now any more than he was in 1938, though not without poetic justice remembering his fondness for pre-war analogies on other occasions —I hope that the word 'Munich' will at last revert to its proper status as the name of a town in Southern Germany.