Out of court
Sir: Mr John Ashe (Letters, 8 March) is almost incoherent with rage at the 'obscurantist fer- vour' with which I persist in defending Gerald Brooke : a man who for the past three years has been imprisoned and brutally maltreated for an act which no civilised country—or civi- lised person—regards as a crime, and who is now being threatened by a new trumped-up 'trial.'
From what I can make out of Mr Ashe's rather wild letter, he appears to be particularly incensed by my reference to his 'excuses for
Soviet actions.' So, to prove how wrong I was, he replaces his three original excuses—which I had already refuted—by five even more irrele- vant, not to say ridiculous, justifications. To quote but one of Mr Ashe's penetrating ques- tions: 'Is there any conceivable connection betweeff the wrs and western intelligence agencies?' The obvious assumption is that the existence of any such 'connection' would, by Mr Ashe's not unfamiliar process of guilt- by-association, provide triumphant proof of Brooke's involvement in espionage. Even the late Mr Vyshinsky used to adhere to more rigid standards of evidence than that. Mr Brooke can count himself fortunate to have been tried by Soviet judges with a modicum of respect for their own laws, rather than by some of his western 'sympathisers.'
Mr Ashe, of course, is entitled to his opinions —but I do wish that he would stop his nause- ating pretence of 'sympathising' with Brooke, while exerting himself to invent ever newer 'proofs' of his guilt.
How refreshing, by contrast, is Mr W. H. Somerville's letter (8 March). No false concern for Brooke there. The fact that Mr Brooke did no actual spying, it says, 'is beside the point': any anti-Soviet activity, such as propaganda, is 'naturally' equivalent to espionage. Mr Somer- ville is at least a forthright man.
One final point. Mr Somerville calls my article 'tendentious.' Well, I must admit that I find it difficult to be completely impartial with regard to organisations like the KGB or the Gestapo. They have murdered too many millions of people for my liking.
Tibor Szamitely University of Reading, Faculty of Letters, Whiteknights Park, Reading
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