SIR,—Mr. Wolseley Maundrell deplores the present " blunt denial of
the oft-repeated claim that we have no quarrel with the German people." There may have been uttered some such affable remarks last September, but Mr. Maundrell naturally, if mournfully, finds some difficulty in getting them repeated now, when, for example, we have ample evidence as to how the Ger- man people, as represented by their Army and Air Force, behave to civilian refugees in Belgium and France.
If Mr. Maundrell believes that these horrors have all been ordered by that wicked Hitler, and reluctantly and protestingly carried out by the German forces—why, he will believe anything.
When victory at long last comes to us, there will be no more "danger of spiritual degeneration " than is risked by a judge who punishes a criminal. Punishment is an act of justice and, above all, a deterrent. It involves neither hatred nor bitterness.
If Christian teaching would have us make friends with the Germans when the war ends, as though none of all this had ever happened, why, so much the worse for Christian teaching and infinitely the worse for the future of the world. Whether Chris- tian teaching does so advise is another matter.—Yours faithfully,
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