The Blunt affair
Sir: As an honourable man, Sir Cecil Parrott (Letters, 1 December) affirms that in his case principle, as well as vetting, militated against any betrayal to that pre-war Germany for whose plight, Versailles obscuring Belsen, he felt sympathy. Yet at that time the Anglo-German Fellowship inspired by Lord Londonderry was welcoming Nazi leaders. And it is notorious that France was corrupted by Nazi influence in high places. Can there be any doubt that there were, at that time when opinion was so divided between sympathies for Communist Russia and Nazi Germany, those people with social and political power in this country who were less scrupulous than Sir Cecil about betrayal to Nazism?
The dilemma between conscience and loyalty may recur. Mr Peregrine Worsthorne wrote recently in the Sunday Telegraph that, were there danger in his eyes of a Marxist government in Britain, he would feel no compunction in betraying it.
Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.!
You, Sir, with Mr Grimond (1 December) and the rest of the chorus have impugned Anthony Blunt's motives and ignored the possibility that there was a degree of moral and political justification, over and above the Forster nonsense, which we respect when Herr Brandt betrays his Nazi government. Yet even left-wing MPs, who would have supported Russian socialism, vilify Blunt in order to make class-conscious vote propaganda. And we should remind ourselves that one part of Mr Blunt's 'betrayal' included communicating secrets of the German army to the Russian ally which the British authorities refused to do. Where is the betrayal here?
Henry Adler 3, Roland Gardens, London SW7 Sir: As students of E.M. Forster, we are sadly disappointed to see the Spectator joining the chorus of ill-considered criticism of Forster which has been stirred up by the Blunt affair (24 November).
You echo once again, with supine unoriginality, Forster's maxim about his country and his friends — yet its whole burden is to place heart above head, and so to point in exactly the opposite direction from that which PrOfessor Blunt took. Then you add a cheap gibe about Forster's 'Only connect', which was his plea that we face and reconcile all sides of ourselves. You have clearly not bothered to ask what Forster actually meant in either case; indeed your parroting of a few Forsterian catch-phrases suggests that you have never read him at all, but only your Dictionary of Quotations.
Finally, Sir, you accuse Forster outright of being the 'guru' of the Cambridge spies. What can you mean? He was an apolitical thinker, but if anything a mystic English traditionalist. He had nothing whatever in common with Professor Blunt et al, except that he was a homosexual at Cambridge. If you know anything to the contrary you ought to say so. If not, you are guilty of the lowest of all journalistic ,practices, the unsubstantiated smear.
Carole Angier OU External Studies Department, Charlbury, Oxford Sir: Ferdinand Mount in his article 'The trivialising of treason' (24 November) has trivialised Dante. In relegating traitors to the ninth circle of Hell, Dante was not writing as 'a propagandist for a shaky citystate constantly at war within and without.' On the contrary. By the time he wrote the Commedia he had acquired a wider view of world affairs than that. If he was a propagandist then, it was certainly not on behalf of Florence.
The ninth circle of Inferno, which is divided into four concentric zones, reprcs ents, in descending order, treachery to family, treachery to party, treachery to guests and, lowest of all, treachery to benefactors and rulers. In this last region Dante places Satan, who crunches in his three mouths Judas, the betrayer of the benefactor of mankind, and Brutus and Cassius, the betrayers of the founder of the Roman Empire. Such a concept was not inspired by the politics of the parish pump.
E. M. Forster was also in error when he claimed Dante in support of his view that loyalty to friends should come before loyalty to country. Dante knew the anguish of having to choose between public and private loyalties. As prior of Florence in 1300, he had to sign the sentence of banishment passed on his beloved friend, Guido Cavalcanti, but sign it he did. Where did E. M. Forster get the idea that Brutus and Cassius were condemned by Dante because they chose to betray their friend rather than their country? Was this yet another example o Cambridge confusion in the Thirties?
Barbara Reynolds 220 Milton Road, Cambridge Sir: Hugh Trevor-Roper asks (24 November): 'What have we gained from tit( exposure of Blunt?' His reply: 'Apart fronthe pleasure of a public scandal, and th( evacuation of tribal resentments, precisely nothing.' My reply: truth. He goes on to ask: 'What would we hay( lost if Blunt had remained unexposed, witt his dead past sunk in secret mystery?' Hr reply: 'Equally, nothing.' My reply: truth. Hans Keller McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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