CONCENTRATION CAMPS
SIR,—I recall that Prof. Murray just ten years ago, in a letter to the Manchester Guardian, declared that what particularly dismayed and revolted him about Nazism was the deliberate, systematic and organiand nature of its persecution of the Jews. Only a few days ago the party of American newspaper editors who visited the camps reported that in their view everything they saw fell into place as part of a diabolical large-scale plan by the Nazis for inflicting cruelties upon their prisoners. Is it not just this non-casual,. well-thought-out quality which distinguishes German devilry in com- mitting these crimes from the guilt incurred by other nations when similar barbarities occur, true as it may be, in Prof. Murray's words, that "the treatment of political prisoners has been little short of appalling
in many other parts of the world " ? German cruelty, in other words, is positive, the execution of a kind of satanistic crusade. Elsewhere dread- ful things are done " because nobody cares."
With all respect I think the speculations in Prof. Murray's final para- graph' dangerous distraction from our duty to judge Germany and set about her reformation accordingly. To say: " What would I have done had I lived under the eye of the Gestapo and yet known about such cruelties? " is to set in train an exculpatory process which resembles the peeling of an onion in order to find out what is inside—and getting the answer nothing. Or to change the metaphor : not much fortitude is needed to resist a first dose of opium or hashish but once let the drug habit be formed and fiats of extraordinary heroism are needed to conform to quite ordin- ary standards of conduct. Dictatorship is a drug—" the strongest poison ever known." While it may not be true that every German cherished the cup and pressed it to his lips, not enough of them at any rate struggled, bit and clenched their teeth when ordinary efforts would have sufficed to save their honour and vindicate their claim to be civilised.
Blenheim, Mount Pleasant Road, Poole. GEORGE RICHARD.
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