SIR DAVID KELLY
SIR.—We would like to apologise to Lady Kelly for any suggestion in The Appeasers that her husband, Sir David Kelly, thought, as did his press attache in Berne, that the war was 'madness for England and had to be ended in shortest order' in 1940. We were trying to describe, but not to ridicule or to malign, the attitudes of those who after the outbreak of war looked for an early peace. The context of our remark shows that it was not intended to be detrimental. We went on :
Pacifists thought war a disaster for mankind.
. Others saw the war as inflicting a mortal blow on England alone. Some saw it as the breeding ground of emergent communism.
There were many such thoughtful groups, in govern- ment as well as outside. We ourselves tried to make clear that these peace negotiations were conducted, as Lady Kelly says, 'with the full knowledge and approval' of responsible people in London. Only Winston Churchill's oratory rallied the nation to a 100 per cent support of the war. Perhaps the future historian will not consider those involved in peace 'soundings' so wrong. We think they were misguided. But we are only historians raising points for discus- • sion, not lawyers arguing a case or judges deciding it.
Lady Kelly questions the accuracy of Prince Hohenlohe's reports. She describes his dispatch as a 'Nazi document . . . highly questionable.' Of course the German documents must be used with care. But Prince Hohenlohe is surely not as unreliable as one might imagine. Sir David Kelly's colleague, Mr. Ashton-Gwatkin, for many years Assistant Under- Secvetary at the Foreign Office, is quoted by Sir David himself in The Ruling Few (page 272) as saying, 'Prince Max was certainly not pro-Nazi; his tastes
and tendencies were pro-British.' If the Foreign Office would let their files for this series of wartime peace talks be examined we would not have to rely on memoirs and German documents alone. Only then will the full story be clear.
MARTIN GILBERT RICHARD GOTT
c I o Weidenfeld and Nicolsdn, 20 New Bond Street, WI
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