Letters and Papers from Prison. By Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (S.C.M. 12s.
6d.) BONHOEFFER was one of Germany's Christian martyrs. A pastor of the Confessing Church, he was arrested in April, 1943, and hanged two years later in the Gestapo prison of Flossenbtirg. These documents written in prison scarcely touch his personal tragedy. They are conversations with the soul—self- searching, compassionate, even humorous. In terms of religious thought, there is much that is original. One is moved, not so much by the tragic situation of the man involved as by the courageous and illuminating testi- mony of a German, good in the best sense of the word, at a time when the Nazi denial of humanism reached so appalling a conclu- sion. Bonhoeffer's prayer for fellow prisoners is valid for all who were imprisoned by that history : " 0 Lord my God, I thank thee that thou hast brought this day to a close. ..."
E. L.
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