SIR,—Your leading article, " Whom are we Fighting," should serve
a useful purpose in clarifying thought on the problems victory will bring. Germany presents a psychological problem, and its solution must be psychological. You warn us against the dangers of a senti- mental Peace, but I am afraid Peace based on present sentiments would involve repressing and crippling Germany in a manner which would ignore psychology. The repressions of 1919 gave Germany an inferiority complex, and only fostered the aggressive tendencies Inherent since the time of Bismarck. Our task is to exorcise that spirit, but it cannot be done by branding Germany as an inferior nation. Disarmed and incapable of aggression she must be, but this should apply equally to Japan and Italy, whose aggression pre- ceded that of Nazi Germany. Indeed, after a transition period, ought not these safeguards to apply to all nations, not only for added safety, but to avoid treating Germany as a pariah nation?
After all that has happened, it will need no little resolution to give Germany equality, independence, and a full opportunity for economic. satisfaction. That policy commends itself perhaps less by its own attractiveness than by the dangers of the alternative. It would be better to exterminate the whole German people than create by re- pressions a nation determined to re-assert itself. We have, it would seem, to do three things. Re-educate the German people in world citizenship, by all means possible. Give her economic prosperity, and remove the seeds of dissatisfaction which create wars. Put force behind the law, and if that force be inter- nationalised, there need be no arguments about unilateral or unequal
disarmament.—Yours faithfully, s T. E. PEARSON. 36 Carpenter Road, Birmingham, 15.
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