SIR, —I think that your remarks on non-fraternisation do not quite
hit the point. I am afraid that the average soldier is not concerned at all with how it hurts the German people—if it does at all—but how it is hurting him himself.
To spend many months in a country engaged in " police " work, and to have no friends other than those companions whom you see day in and day out, is a hardship that proles well nigh intolerable to a normal human being. Young men crave female society, and, notwithstanding all the laws ever made, will get it if it is obtainable—and I'm quite sure, from what I have noticed, that it is—and when a law is steadily broken, as this one seems as if it might be, the makers of that law are brought into disrepute and ridicule, which surely is bad politics.
It is impossible for the average British soldier to adopt a stern un- bending attitude when approached by a toddler—and the children of Germany are just as lovely as the children of other countries. If he were a Nazi it would be easy—that is, the type that can do these things—but he isn't, thank God.
Again, there has been much spoken of re-educating the Germans. Surely it is desirable that these children should be brought up to look upon the British soldier as somebody kind and tolerant, and not as a grim ogre—indeed, a poor representative of the British people.
I am afraid that it was a very poor idea from the first, and the danger is that if it is repeated now the German people will think that they have won a moral victory, at least, in one respect.—Yours, &c., J. F. W. (B.L.A.).
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