HERR OSSIETZKY - - [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Sm,—Mr. Lawson's letter is based on insufficient information. Perhaps I misled him by saying that Ossietiky was "still a captive." What I said was true but it- is "also true that' he had been ostentatiously -declared free by no less a person than Goering himself. In this country, "too; his freedoin had been given prominence by a letter in The Times from Lord Allen of Hurtwood congratulating the German Govern- ment on its clemency.
Does Mr. Lawson regard it as a " gross affront to a -great nation " to visit one of its citizens who is officially declared to be free and to convey to him the good wishes of distinguished men abroad ? It was for trying to do this that my colleague and I were asked to leave Berlin.
If the well-advertised freedom of the Nobel Prize winner was a fact where was the harm in our going to Berlin ? If it was not a fact who is to blame—ourselves or the Gentian
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