LETTERS
From : Professor H. J. Hanham, C. J. Reddall, Randolph S. Churchill, John Papworth, H. K. Bhabha, Shaun Mandy, Lilian Knapp, Richard Hughes, David Charles Ross, K. Jagatsingh, Miss Enid Lakenian, P. L. G. Bateman, Steven Perry- man, Rev. Canon W. R. Torvaney, John Clinton-
`Mein Kampf' Suppressed
SIR,—What can the Bavarian government be think- ing of? Surely there is no better way to advertise a book than to try to prevent its publication? And surely it would be worth the publishers' while to go ahead and publish, if only for the publicity they would gain?
We all have ambivalent feelings about Mein Kampf. If one takes it up and turns casually to some particularly noxious passage it sends shudders down the spine. But is it really political dynamite? Clearly not. For the overwhelming majority of English- language readers Mein Kampf is a desperately silly book which belongs to the intellectual lumber of the past. Students still have to read it if they are to understand Nazism, so that there is a strong case for keeping the book in print. But it is likely to have about as much influence in the English-speaking world as that other very wicked book, Machiavelli's Prince.
Is this not just another case of our German friends leaning over backwards to avoid being tarred with the Nazi brush? Twenty years after the war a new Germany has reached maturity. And that new Germany is quite capable of making its own way in the world without resorting to a particularly absurd form of literary censorship.
H. J. HANHAM
University of Edinburgh, Department of Politics
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