AUGUST THE THIRTEENTH
SIR,—Like myself, many of your readers will have been enlightened, if not gladdened, by Mr. Con- stantino FitzGibbon's penetrathig analysis of 'What lies behind Ulbricht's Wall?' (Spectator, October 6). The forced collectivisation of East Germany by an alien community was an effective and dreadful method of brainwashing.
The peoples of Eastern Germany and Russia arc psychologically poles apart. The former rejected Marxist Communism, the latter adopted it as the national religion The Eastern .German practises Lutheran Protestintism in Christianity; the Russian, when permitted. Eastern Orthodox Catholicism. The two comniunitie. are, then, totally disparate in personality presentation; and August 13, 1961, Celebrates no victory of arms, but demonstrates a brutal tyranny of the spirit.
The soul of our own land is too akin to that of Eastern. Germany to contemplate these current events without misgiving, and it may well be that the instructed Communist in our midst is a greater menace to peace than the threat of unleashed nuclear fission. If that be so, it seems important that politi- cal psychology should occupy a more prominent place in the curricula of our educational establish- ments than appears to be the case at present.
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