3 MAY 1940, Page 16

ISOLATIONIST AMERICA

SIR,—If Mr. Radinsky's typical American could suddenly be transformed into a citizen of one of the countries now under Nazi control, and if, forgetting for the moment his new citizenship, he were to adopt an attitude with the remotest suggestion about it of "not caring a damn" what other people think, he would very soon discover (either through his removal to a concentration camp or through some quicker and more finally effective method of dealing with him) that this war is intimately concerned with matters that are far removed from those mere " abstractions " for which Mr. Radinsky declares "people will not fight." But I am not sure that Mr. Radinsky is not right and that we have not talked far too much about our common democratic heritage and appealed far too little to those generous instincts of hatred of tyranny and oppression which I cannot but believe Americans share with ourselves. Whatever may be the limitations of British democracy, it has at any rate not crushed the kind of spirit which makes the British people ready to make sacrifices in defence of the helpless and oppressed. I should be sorry to think that t e American type of democracy had made Americans so self-centrcd and self-satisfied that they are indifferent to the sufferings of the victims of Nazidom in Europe.—Yours faithfully,