13 JULY 1944, Page 12

SIR,—Miss Rathbone's letter reminds me of a conversation I had

with an ex-schoolmaster during my last visit to Germany—in 1938. This man —he was not a Jew—had four sons Who had suffered many things owing to their refusal to join the Hitler Youth. Some words of his I have never forgotten. "There are many thousands of us" (might he not, perhaps, have said " millions "?) "who are living in a state of perpetual shame, because we know we ought to speak out—and we can't." Nor, I think could they at that stage. But the mystery remains of how, in the beginning, these intelligent people allowed themselves to be reduced to