Sin,—Miss Violet Alford accuses me of misrepresenting Lord Vansitt ui If
so, I regret it, but I think I used the word "unintentional," fo! was thinking less of what he said than of the effect of his insistence the guilt of Germany and the whole of Germany. It is not easy distinguish between justice and revenge. To speak of hanging a murclem as giving .due satisfaction to the relatives of his victim is that view justice which requires. an eye for an eye, which is just revenge and forbidden to Christians. The sole justification of human punishment the prevention of crime. Anything more must be left to God.
But my sole motive in writing was that this insistence on Germ, guilt—and some of their sins are so hideous, none worse than thi treatment of the Jews, that it is hard to try and think without passion.. islikely to obscure what should and must be our first and dominni aim, the settlement of Europe including Germany. Much has been in of the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles. As a fact it was just enotti from the point of view of that same justice—an eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth. Its real evil was that pointed out at once by Lat Keynes, that everything wis being thought of except the future pan of Europe, the future welfare of Europe. The only man who said wise thing during the unhappy election which followed the war at the late Lord Oxford, who said that the great thing to be avoided making a German peace. The Atlantic Charter indicates the same a as Lord Keynes. What I fear in Lord Vansittart's crusade to punii Germany's guilt is that it will distract our minds front what they nun to be bent on with every ounce of nervous energy.
I am perfectly convinced that numbers of Germans are shocked what has been done in their name. Goebbels himself declared that de first task of the Nazis had been to conquer Germany_ They could a nothing till that was achieved. How their task of coercion and comp lion is to be undone I do not know, nor shall I live to see it. But I an sure it will need wisdom as well as punishment, a Europe that de to what is best in Germany hope as well as remorse.—Yours, &c.,
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