Bryant and the Jews
Sir: It's not hard to show that Sir Arthur Bryant was politically incorrect. Why, then, does Mr Andrew Roberts misrepresent him? CA Nazi sympathiser and supreme toady,' 23 July). I will give just two exam- ples, although there are many others: Mr Roberts charges that in Unfinished Victory (1940) Sir Arthur says of some Jews, `Their inherited instinct was to skim the cream rather than to waste vain time and effort in making enduring things . .' Yes, but Mr Roberts distorts Sir Arthur's clear meaning when he deletes the rest of the sentence: 'which would only be taken from them by their Christian oppressors before they could be enjoyed' (p.142).
Nor is it the 'assimilated and cultivated' German Jews that Sir Arthur criticises, despite Mr Roberts's claim to the contrary. As Sir Arthur says on p.143, 'I am writing not of the Jews long domiciled in Germany who had learnt to live and think as Ger- mans and who had often conferred, espe- cially in the realms of learning, science, and medicine, the greatest distinction on their adopted country, but of the migrant type . .
Sir Arthur would never receive the Right- eous Gentile Award, but so what? He was an accomplished historian whose books still bear reading many years later, and that emphatically includes Unfinished Victory. Mr Roberts, by comparison, is not even a pygmy.
Ben Harrison
Coleman, Georgia 31736, USA
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