VERY DIFFERENT feelings were roused in me by the tide
of cant which has flowed steadily (with one or two notable exceptions) since Strydom died on Sunday. Why no newspaper has come flat out and said that the man was a Nazi, and a whole-hearted one, I don't know, for he was; perhaps—though I doubt it—they were frightened at the thought of a letter from that pathetic gentleman in South Africa House whose job is to write letters to British newspapers defending the indefensible in his country. But the BBC, not normally at its best in this sort of situation, came through with flying colours. Though the news bulletins I heard did not stray beyond the permitted-boundaries of BBC im- partiality, they made no bones about the character, of the man and the nature of his policies. The BBC was almost alone, 1 think, in mentioning his atti- tude to the war (he was passionately opposed to South Africa's anti-Nazi participation), and for good measure rubbed in his fanatical republican- ism hard. The BBC has certainly come a long way since the days when their bulletins, on the death of the unspeakable Senator Bilbo, described him only as 'a pastmaster of the filibuster.'
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