14 OCTOBER 1938, Page 18

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Snt,—Will you allow one

who spent in Berlin the week immediately preceding the crisis to express his profound distress at the tone, atmosphere and implications of your last week's issue ? Careful reading of the whole issue, including the correspondence, leaves me with the impression of one- sided and prejudiced statement which is none the less dangerous because obviously sincere.

I am aware that the contacts which a visitor to a foreign country can make in a week are very limited, and that a round of official engagements and a complete ignorance of the language are not the best conditions, for gathering reliable impressions ; nevertheless I would like to give you my reactions in the hope that they may suggest a point of view which seems to be ignored in your pages.

I left Berlin with the conviction that the German people shrink from war as nn c a as we do ; that they have a passionate and even pathetic desir.t to be understood by the rest of the world, and particularly by Britain ; that they are by no means so ignorant of events both within and without their country as our Press constantly suggests ; and that while many of the developments of Cc:man internal and external policy, give rise for misgiving, the mass of the people, and the whole of the young, are wholeheartedly behind the present regime because it has recovered for them self-respect and hope. I brought back from Berlin impressions of an extremely capable, thorough, industrious, disciplined and kindly people from whom we can !earn much.

Again and again I was asked : " Why do not you English try to understand us ? " We are not called on to accept the German view of the causes of the last war ; of the Versailles Treaty ; of the purposes and effects of post-War diplomacy, but unless we try to understand their point of view, which is held as sincerely as our own, there will be no hope of that improvement in our relations which they so much desire.

As a nation we allow ourselves to be dominated by prejudices, by phrases and by abstract theories. We misjudge other nationals because they do not possess characteristics and qualities which are perhaps our redeeming features ; and we fail to recognise in them qualities for the lack of which we are the poorer. We condemn the Totalitarian State without recognising that in practice it has many great advantages ; we worship the democratic ideal without acknowledging that in practice it has many serious defects; and by an oversimplifi- cation of complicated issues we form opinions on false premises.

You may reasonably reply that I am falling into a similar error because I have given one point of view only and have not attempted tp justify my criticism of your attitude towards the recent crisis. I plead guilty, and for two reasons. In the first place, this letter is intended as an antidote, and in the second_ place, it is already unduly long.—Yours critically,