Put out Fewer Flags To be obliged to commit suicide
by Herr Hitler, to be impersonated upon the films by Mr. James Mason, and to have one's personal papers edited by Captain Liddell Hart—these are all contingencies which, in a greater or less degree, most of us would wish to avoid. It is the last of them which at the moment bedevils Rommel's reputation. His own account of his campaigns, about which Mr. Nigel Nicolson writes else- where in this issue, is graphic, sensible, fair-minded and chivalrous. But, although in his introduction to The Rommel Papers, Captain Liddell Hart claims that " they should go far to dispel the dust of controversy," he has in fact failed• to set them in perspective. An over-eulogistic introduction, and a recurrent tendency in the footnotes to credit the editor with such achievements as having invented the principle of the Blitzkrieg in 1920 have not unnaturally raised the hackles of the critics; and Rommel's good name is in danger of being tarnished by the atmosphere of mutual admiration in which his memory has somehow got itself involved.
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