HUNGER IN GERMANY
Si,—May I have another Shot at indicating some of the curious logic of Mr. Gollancz's arguments? In his recent pamphlet, Leaving Them to Their Fate, he exhorts, "Abandon utterly the concepts of 'Ger- many' and 'India.' ' Germany ' and 'India' simply do not exist." On the same page he argues: "In allocating our help the criterion should be the degree of need, and nothing else whatsoever. Strictly within the context of, and subject to the limitations implied by, this . . . proposition, we have-a speciql obligation to Germany." That is one fine piece of logic. Here is another, from the same source. He writes that "to distinguish, iii this matter of "relief from Suffering, the ' innocent ' and the guilty ', though better than distinguishing men of one nationality from .men of another, would be quite irrelevant." Three pages later he adds : "to prefer a suffering enemy to an "equally suffering friend would be wickedness." Why, on his previous argument? He adds : "But, with that proviso, an enemy's enmity is something additionally 'compulsive, or would be if his hunger were not already. compulsive absolutely," I leave the reader, as Mr. Gollancz leaves him, to disentangle the sense of this for himself. But I would bite to make tWo-suggestions: ' One is that if, as Mr. Gollancz contended in an earlier pamphlet, the British public really has more "responsibility." than the German people' for the atrocities committed in tile concentration camps, it now appears that. Germany —which "simply does not exist "—laX-no reslinObilities but has very special rights . which we have -a specie obhgtits3n " to satisfy! The other is that it would be a good thing if Mr.-.Gollancz, befbre he took upon himself to preach a sermon to the British people. in the course of which he accuses the British Press of "concealing facts, telling lies, magnifying trivialities," &c., and the British 'Governitient of holding to a policy of "wilful starvation.," were somewhat more ,caxeftil
to get his arguments straight.—Yours sincerely, ' Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. nAvto •Ttromsoif
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