[To TEE EDITOR or THE " spacTrrox."1 SIR, — In an editorial
note on a letter in last week's Spectator dealing with Dr. Holland Rose's comments on my association
with a circular issued by the Union of Democratic Control, you say:—
" What we object to is Utopia being defined in terms which encourage our enemies, and tend to make our own people believe that we are knaves and tyrants—English wolves oppressing innocent German lambs. Apparently a man may not protest even against that gross insinuation without being reproved by the self- righteous sophists."
Well, I suppose even a "self-righteous sophist" is entitled to protest against misrepresentation. Will you quote a single line from the circular, from anything I have written personally or have signed collectively with others, that justifies the state- ment that I have said or insinuated that our people are "knaves and tyrants and wolves," or that the Germans are " innocent lambs " This is not what I believe, nor anything resembling it; it is not what I have said or implied. Yet you would have your readers infer both. You give an account of my opinions and statements which is simply untrue. I will amend slightly your own dictum on this matter: "Apparently a man may not protest even against gross misrepresentation
without being reproved as a self-righteous sophist."—I am, 4 King's Bench Walk, Temple, E.C.
[Mr. Norman Angell is very zealously angry with us, and, like all angry people who have nothing else to say, falls back on a to quoque. Of course Mr. Norman Angell and his co-signatories did not say in so many words that we were likely to play the part of wolves and that the Germans were lambs, but this is certainly the impression of their mental attitude made upon the present writer, and, we believe, on many other people. If those who signed the letter did not think we were going, unless restrained, to victimize and humiliate Germany, and generally to play a base part, why this anxious haste to raise funds and start an organization to protect the lamb from the wolf P—ED. Spectator.]
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