THE MISSING LINK
SIR,—Mr. Harold Nicolson, in his criticism of the British Council for Christian Settlement in Europe, has confused the Council membership with the list of the names of those who supported the idea of the formation of the Council. More than half the people to whom Mr. Nicolson takes exception, including all the former members of the Link, are not members of the Council at all.
I have asked Mr. Nicolson where I can obtain evidence that those who really are closely associated with the Council desire the establishment in this country of the evils of the Nazi regime and seek to promote that end, but I gather that he does not feel that the evidence he could supply would convince me.
In regard to former membership of " banned" organisa- tions it is news to me that the British Union has been " banned," and I have always been under the impression— though here I am open to correction—that the Link dissolved voluntarily when the achievement of its aim—the establish- ment of a better understanding with Germany—was rendered impossible by the war.
The fact that one or two people who really are my col- leagues on the Council should have left organisations with the aims and policy of which neither I nor Mr. Nicolson is in full accord, is, I should have thought, fairly adequate proof that they, too, are not in agreement with them. That they should ever have been associated with them at all is, to my mind, fairly adequately accounted for by the fact that the utter hopelessness of all the older political parties has created for many of us a state of adversity which has caused us, in desperation, to experiment with strange bed-fellows. If the Government does not succeed in overcoming its reluctance to produce a full statement of its war aims and peace conditions which we can feel no reason to be ashamed of and the German people can have no good cause to regard as ungenerous and unjust, I foresee that the field for the authorities' observational activities is likely to extend rapidly far beyond the boundaries of the membership of the Council for Christian Settlement in Europe.—Yours very truly,
TAVISTOCK.
Cairnsmore, Newton Stewart, Wigtownshire.
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