Sat,—I do not wish to enter very deeply into the
controversy which Black Record has provoked. But on .• one passage I should like to comment. Speaking of the English attitude to the Germans in 1918 and 1919, Sir Robert Vansittart writes: "No country had ever so well deserved defeat or asked more loudly for retribution; but she got off with a fraction of the penalties that she would have imposed on the world had she won. How loud the Germans cried about reparations. ' Poor, poor Germans,' said all the tenderhearts. And some added: ` Besides the figures are too big to make sense.' Well, the figures are nothing compared with those that these poor, poor Germans have now enforced on the poor, poor French."
But are the Germans right or wrong? If they are right, why should we condemn them? If they are wrong, why should we imitate them?
But it is not so much the reasoning as the moral flavour of this passage that I find disquieting. Magnanimity towards the vanquished has been in all ages a characteristic of th' English people, in their public as well as in daeir private relations. It may be inconvenient, but does anyone wish it otherwise? And as a distant and obscure observer looking towards the future, I cannot feel altogether easy when I see the Diplomatic Adviset to the Government making the most eminent virtue of his countrymen. a theme for coarse sarcasm.
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