Honourable man?
Sir: In his excellent article on the fall of Singapore (13 February) Murray Sayle, musing on the psychology of General Per- cival, writes that 'without the callous war- rior spirit . . . empires cannot be long main- tained. Percival would therefore emerge both as a faithful reflection of his times and a decent man of considerable moral courage . .
Well, perhaps. But such was not the opi- nion of General Tom Barry, who corn- manded a brigade of the IRA during the Irish troubles' in 1920, quoted by Ulick O'Connor in his book A Terrible Beauty is Born. After allowing that many of his British enemies were honourable men, he told O'Connor that, 'On the other hand, you had a person like Major Percival with the Essex Regiment, who was a practising sadist. I can tell you that I wasn't very put out when later he made a coward of himself by surrendering to the Japanese when he was in command at Singapore.'
If this be true Percival surrendered to a bird of his own feather for, as Sayle reminds us, General Tokoyuki Yamashita was finally executed by the Americans in the Philippines for his, presumably, sadistic activities there. 'Helpless resignation in the face of same species aggression' indeed! W. E. Armstron 16 Rue Thiers, Bayonne France
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