THE WAR-CRIMINAL PROBLEM
sm,—I regret that my letter in your issue of August z7th provided one of your correspondents, Mr. Howard Lees, with " an unanswerable argument" for giving up The Spectator after taking it for three and a half years. I have been reading The Spectator for some forty years and intend to continue doing so in spite of the fact that I consider that you have not treated me quite fairly. My letter brougfit me fifteen personal letters, all but one strongly approving my plan for dealing with the Germans after the war. You, Sir, must have received a number of letters approving mine yet you published none of them. This does not seem to me to be in keeping with the time-honoured policy of The Spectator to present both sides of a question.
Mr. Lees calls my suggestion to reduce the population of Germany "ethically revolting- and economically silly." If he speaks with such severity of measures which cannot fail to cure Germany of her mania for war, what, I would ask, has he left to say of a third World War? Another correspondent, Archdeacon Burne, thinks that I may have been joking. Nothing was further from my mind. He is shocked at the thought of our copying Hitler, Himmler, and the rest of the Nazi gang. Are we not copying them when we kill, maim, and blind our enemies, torpedo their ships, and bomb and burn their cities? Or perhaps they are copying us? If they use poison gas on us are we not going to copy them and spread it over Germany? It is Mr. Burne's brand of sensibility, unfortunately all too common in England, that gets us the reputation among foreigners of being hypocrites. We are not really hypocrites; we are merely unimaginative. If we and our Allies render the Germans powerless to plunge the world into war again Mr. Burne and others who think like him would have the moral satisfaction of reflecting that we had taught Germany and, indeed, all the world the valuable lesson that wars of aggression do not pay.
May I say that I am not really a bloodthirsty person? I am a medical man and have spent the last thirty-five years of my professional life as an anaesthetist in Canada. My life's work' has been preventing
[We did feceive one or two letters supporting Dr. Howell, and many more opposing him. In present conditions space can be spared only for letters which add some new consideration or argument, not merely endorse a point of view already adequately expressed.—En., The Spectator.]
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