Coarse and irrational
Sir: One does not expect to find rampant racism in a paper like the Spectator, but it is all there in the review of Todd's book on Luther, by A. L. Rowse (13 February). His review is replete with stereotypes of what he considers to be the German character. Thus he mentions 'the coarseness of the German temperament'; `. . . representatively Ger- man, he was very musical'; 'Luther . . is a creature of the irrational. How character- istically German!', and so forth. One would have thought that such global judgments of whole nations had died with the late and unlamented Adolf Hitler, but apparently they still persist among 'creatures of the ir- rational'.
Luther was certainly coarse, musical and irrational, as well as many other things; this does not prove that Germans are coarser than Russians, more musical than Italians, or more irrational than the English! It is
certainly both coarse and irrational to revive ancient stereotypes like these, for which no scientific evidence of any kind exists.
H. J. Eysenck
Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5
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