SIR,—Are not Sir Henry Slesser's fears unfounded or, to be
more precise, founded upon a loose interpretation of that sentence of the Atlantic Charter you quote ? "The right of all peoples to choose the form of .government under which they will live" means exactly what it says. Surely neither the German nor the Italian peoples can be said to have "chosen" National Socialism or Fascism! These forms were imposed upon them from above by the elimination of opposition, which is the antithesis of choice. (The people's subsequent complicity is another matter.) Nor does the Charter allow peoples the freedom to flout International Law. May we not take it that in future the " State " is' to be read as the sum total of the people's will—not as some vague and tyrannous entity used by a Dictator to cloak his own nefarious purposes?
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