LORD KEMSLEY AND DR. DIRKSEN
SIR,—Lord Kemsley was less than fair to Miss Wiskemann in his letter in the Spectator of September 2nd, where he denied his reported remark to Rosenberg without referring to the documentary evidence for it that Miss Wiskemann quoted. The impression is thus left that Miss Wiskemann was repeating unsubstantiated gossip. The passage in question is in Dirksen's minute on his conversation with Lord Kemsley of August 2nd, 1939: "Lord Kemsley spoke with pleasure of his conversation with Reichsleiter Rosenberg (charming personality), to whom he had said that Chamberlain was in his way the Fuehrer of England, similar to Hitler and Mussolini. This had visibly made an impression upon Rosenberg " (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R., Documents and Materials Relating to the Eve of the Second World War, ii. 114). Did Dirksen make this up? He was not an imaginative nor a dishonest man. The historian is left with Dirksen's record made on the same day as the conversation itself, and Lord Konsley's denial made ten years later.—Yours, &c.,
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