17 SEPTEMBER 1943, Page 12

Sit,—Miss Starkie's quotations from Thomas Mann's celebrated pamphlet of 1916

show admirably the mind of normal right-wing Prussianised Germany, but are somewhat unjust to Thomas Mann himself. They do not mention his conversion. He started as a right-wing aristocrat and changed with characteristic slowness but equally characteristic weight, to democratic Liberalism, to support of the League of Nations, and, after the Nazi revolution, to fiery• opposition and voluntary exile. The beginning of the change would perhaps be Belrachtungen einer Unpolitischen (1918), a defence, but an uneasy defence, of the Conserva- tive principles which he was about to desert.—Yours faithfully, GILBERT MURRAY.