Sta,—As a British subject and one who is immensely and
unashamedly proud of his country's history and traditions, I take the strongest possible exception to the gratuitous denigration which informs the article from your correspondent in Bonn. She says we are 'arrogant and crude; that we must change 'our self-righteousness and arrogance' and that our colonial record does not 'entitle us to feel superior to other Europeans.' And, if these three swift kicks in our imperial pants are not enough to make us wince, she weighs in with this wallop below the belt: 'they [the Europeans] know that they are our equals and in some ways our betters.'
The syndrome of the superman dies hard and your Bann reporter seems to have been mixing with the germ-carriers in the German capital. Does she seriously suggest that the people who, within living memory, created special death camps wherein mil- lions of innocent human beings (including 950,000 children under the age of thirteen) were shovelled like vermin into incinerators and gas chambers— does she suggest that these are the ones who are 'our betters'? Or is it thaw superior Europeans who, a few years ago, capitulated so ignominiously to their enemies leaving the (inferior) Britons to stand alone in the fight for freedom—is it these whom we must now regard as 'our betters'? What bloody nonsense!
Your pro-European correspondent then proceeds peevishly to complain that she finds nothing but rudeness when she travels along our country roads in her German car bearing German number plates. It could be that the appearance of such Teutonic symbols may remind some of our citizens of those other German machines that once appeared over our fair and pleasant land not so very long ago. The latter were certainly our superiors for a while, but inevitably and arrogantly we bashed the day- lights out of them—as always—and so made our highways safe and secure for FrAulein Gainham to tootle along in her Mercedes a few years later.
[Mr. Goulden's letter would seem to be a perfect example of the kind of arrogance Miss Gainham was writing about.—Editor, Spectator.)
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