25 MAY 1962, Page 11

BEASTLY TO THE GERMANS

SIR,—Mr. FitzGibbon is, of course, at liberty to be pro- anything he likes, even Krupp and the syna- gogue-daubers, who are at least as representative of the `new' Germany as the Mayor of Berlin, but some things he must not be, if he wants to be taken by other people as seriously as he obviously takes himself. One of these is the spreader of the ambiguous smear : 'It has not yet been established who paid for the buses. It is not hard to guess.' This is a perfect example of how to make the maximum mischief while being vague enough to avoid even being proved wrong, and at the same time suggesting that one knows a thing or two that your readers don't.

One feels that he should also, perhaps, be wary of speaking for `the majority of the people, the working class.' In so far as 'the working class' has voiced an opinion on the subject at all, through the industrial unions and the constituency Labour Parties, the evi- dence is against him. Admittedly the evidence is far from conclusive, but perhaps more to be relied upon than the totally unsupported assertion of a profes- sional anti-anti-propagandist.

Finally, one would implore Mr. FitzGibbon to con- sider carefully this question: that in being anti- German and anti-American in some things, may one not also be being pro-British? When one considers the Berlin hysteria of a few months ago, and South- East Asia last week and this, it seems to at least one citizen that it might easily be so.