The irresponsible Germans
Sir: While one can appreciate the motives which lea Herr Menshausen to write his letter (18 August). its -inaccuracies and its rudeness deserve reproof.
In the first place, the parallels with 1914 and 1940 do not work. Herr Menshausen should know that in 1914 the British troops did not 'embark in the western ports'; in 1940 they were thrown into the sea. Both times they fought, and quite respect- ably. The coarse jeer, the imputation of national cowardice, does not come gracefully from one who speaks in the name of a nation twice punished for criminal presumption by coalitions in which Britain bore a major share.
Herr M answers an argument on a specific point of economic policy with a nationalist diatribe; his implication is that Germany shall be as irrespon- sible as she pleases because the British do not love
her enough, and have not sufficient care for the German interest. This is not the logic of great powers; one wonders where Herr Menshausen would be if the United States had adopted it toward Germany in the years after the war.
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