" UNFINISHED VICTORY"
SIR,—Mr. Pritt is being pressed to show in what way the opinions he holds differ from those of members of the Com- munist Party? But what about Mr. Arthur Bryant? In the middle of a war in which we are fighting for our existence he brings out a book which seems designed to prove that England is almost entirely in the wrong and Hitler almost entirely in the right. As your reviewer remarked, Dr. Goebbels couldn't have presented the Nazis' case more strongly. Yet Mr. Bryant is a prominent member of the Conservative Party, an official at the Party Central Office, the Chairman of the Right Book Club, and till recently, I believe, held a post in the Ministry of Infor- mation. Like Mr. Pritt in the Labour Party, he seems to find no difficulty in reconciling these positions with the views he parades in this book.
What is the Conservative Party going to do about this? Everyone knows that in this war the Nazis consider propa- ganda to be one of their strongest weapons. Hitler has written a book to tell us so. His by now familiar tactics (they are those of Stalin also) are to undermine his enemies' morale by securing well-placed friends among the garrison which he is attacking. I don't doubt that Mr. Bryant, as he listened in a trance to the outpourings at the Nuremberg Rally or drank in the mystic ramblings and vituperations of Mein Kampf, was perfectly unaware that he was being conditioned to do Hitler's work in this country. That is the weakness of so many British
Fascists or fascisizing persons : professed nationalists, they inevitably find themselves drawn into the position of serving foreign and hostile nations against their own. But Mr. Bryant's innocence will not satisfy other people. His book will lead many both at home and abroad, to suppose that the Conserva- tive Party is not altogether in earnest in its desire to win the war unless it publicly dissociates itself from him.—Yours faithfully, GERALD BRENAN. Bell Court, Aldbourne, Marlborough.
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