" MEIN KAMPF " [To the Editor of Tim SPECTATOR.]
Smn,—In your issue of November 1st " Janus " asserts that Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, has been written when he was. as a defeated rebel in prison, and that this explains the con- tradiction between its wild bellicosity and the meek peaceful-. ness of his Reichstag May speech. I am sorry to have to state. that your contributor is seriously mistaken. Only the first part of the first volume, chiefly treating the history of his party, was written in 1924, not in prison, but in honest and comfortable fortress custody of only several months. The rest of the first and the whole second volume, and especially the latter's parts containing the most licentious eruptions and invitations against France and Russia, have been composed after his release from custody and for the greater part after he conclusion of the Locarno Pact and the evacuation of the Ruhr and Cologne district.
In this connexion it must be noted : the named book has not' a line which has been altered, as " Janus " admits, in its most recent editions ; it is officially designated to be the paramount in German literature and political education ; it is forced upon all German officials, soldiers, ptipils, and the whole population in millions of copies at sale, of course, of about 12 sh. ; it is circulated abroad in thousands of copies by the German cruisers and liners, and Hitler himself is boasting over and over again that he has nothing to change in his pronounced opinions and principles, and clings to them as laid down in his book unshakably.—Yours faithfully,
EXPERTUS.
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