31 MAY 1940, Page 6

I can testify, on the basis of a private letter

from an officer serving in Flanders, to the truth of the semi-official statement circulated on Wednesday that British troops are filled with irrepressible anger at the brutal bestialities committed by the Germans against the civilian population. The writer of the letter, dated several days before the statement in question, said he was well and fit and ready to stand up to anything except the horror of the sight of the victims of German bar- barism. It can never be forgotten in the final settlement that the bombers and butchers of refugees and hospitals and wounded in every country on which the scourge of Hitlerism has fallen are ordinary average Germans—clerks and artisans and tradesmen in civil life. It is useless—unhappily—to maintain the pretence that the Nazi leaders are criminals and the German people guiltless.