18 NOVEMBER 1972, Page 34

Adam von Trott

Sir: Such is the vanity of human wishes that even Mr David Astor (Letters, October 14) after his diatribe against my most recent article in The Spectator (October 7), may still expect to be taken seriously. But how can he be?

He offers no proof when he castigates my critique of the solution adopted by Adam von Trott for preventing World War II — and pursued, as Mr Astor forgets, throughout most of the conflict. Reversing himself (without apology) Mr Astor next admits that the pan-German scheme, for which Trott and so many of his colleagues sacrificed their lives, "may have been an impossible aim." It was indeed. And impossible, too, is the obsessive crusading irrationality of its impenitent British exponent.

As moralist — a neophyte to be sure — Mr Astor does have a novel theory to prppound. He implies that, if you have exposed yourself to a hideous death by Nazi butchers, all your prior efforts become sacrosanct and must remain unexamined. Political wisdom is, in other words, conferred retroactively and irrespective of content. Upon what meat does this our newspaper Caesar feed that he is grown so foolish?

It is not only insolent but absurd of Mr Astor to call for silence on grounds as tragically ludicrous as these. If, from a futile martyrdom, I could have saved a noble but misguided friend like Trott, I would have committed an act of friendship more authentic than anything done in Britain or the United States which, despite superficial disclaimers, enabled Adam to persist.

The Astor family record is famous or notorious and mine (with people such as David Astor controlling major outlets) is manifestly obscure. But for purposes of comparison by your readers, do please allow me to encroach upon your space with other relevant points. There is nothing new for me in the argument that Britain and the free world would have undergone a grievous setback if we had ever relied on a bargain struck with any segment of the German High Command. When there was still time for the West to pull itself together, I had, with Papen subverting the independence of Austria, sounded in the News Chronicle (London, November 12, 1937) one of the numerous current alarms against so grave a challenge. That brief piece was followed, moreover, by a long article on 'Britain and the European Balance,' in the Fortnightly, (March 1, 1938). There I maintained that if the West allowed Austria to fall, Czechoslovakia would speedily be divided up and under an ensuing Russo-German Agreement, Poland might also be undermined. Those presentiments were published barely two weeks before the fall of Austria, six months before Munich and a year and a half before the Nazi-Soviet Pact which precipitated World War II.

This article was reproduced by an American monthly digest and reported on the front page of the New York World Telegram. Here, of course, it was ignored. In the context of Mr Astor's fresh restatement of the dubious cast for a German Army revolt, I should emphasise that the foregoing analysis specifically warned against a hook-up by the Reichswehr with the Red Army as the core of a Russo-German agreement. Germany, I contended in 1938, would thus gain the mastery of Europe — a foreboding which, from 1939 to 1945, was soon fulfilled.

Linked too, with the latest Astor eruption is the fact that my 1938 forecast was reprinted as an appendix to my second book Peace by Power (New York and London, 1942) — a volume reviewed most generously in The Spectator by Sir Denis Brogan and similarly in the Nation. New York, by Reinhold Niebuhr. In his letter about me, Mr Astor hints at endorsement of poor Trott's muddled endeavours by so eminent an American thinker as Dr Niebuhr. As one who knew Dr Niebuhr and contributed for years to the influential American publication which he edited, I can inform your readers that Dr Niebuhr was kind to Trott, as to many others, for personal rather than political reasons. And that, to this day, would also be my own attitude.

To straighten out Mr David Astor over detail would be only less difficult than to extract from him a consistent view of the indissoluble tie between private conduct and public policy. I do not believe in visiting the sins of the fathers (or mothers) upon their children. But after a vicious outburst by Mr David Astor I might be entitled to ask whether he ever rejected, in a manner subject to proof, everything done by his parents and their circle that weakened the morale of the West, emboldened the Nazis and facilitated thereby the onset. of World War II — with all its dire sequel. On this topic, references show, I May claim to come into court with clean hands. Does a guilty conscience, in much that Mr David Astor selects and says, impel him?

Lionel Gelber St James's Club, 106 Piccadilly, London W1