7 AUGUST 1999, Page 23

Wodehouse's code

From Mr Hany Lesser Sir: P.G. Wodehouse's wartime broadcasts did not portray the Germans as 'really jolly decent chaps' but as aggressive, callous and above all incompetent: had Berlin under- stood his sense of humour, he would proba- bly have ended up in Buchenwald (Letters, 24 July). No doubt he should not have broad- cast at all, but what he actually said, besides being funny, was quite good propaganda for the Allies, which he was lucky to get away with. To say that a cabbage had been dipped hastily into the soup 'by a cook who disliked getting his hands wet' or of the llag (intern- ment camp), 'whether it be a Sta, an Of, or an I, it is still a German prison camp', is not the language of a collaborator or an apolo- gist.

Harry Lesser