TRADING WITH THE ENEMY
SIR,—Mr. David Kuhrt takes me to task for saying that 'our' morality is superior to that of the Com- munists. He says that any assumption that the English are more moral, as a race, than the Chinese or the Russians is mere pharisaism. He is quite right. In- deed I should go further and say that any supposed connection between 'race' on the one hand and in- tellectual or spiritual qualities or defects on the other is rubbish. I never have and never shall sub- scribe to any racist theory of any sort.
I further agree with him that the attribution of moral strength or moral weakness to large groups of people is dangerous. I do not, however, believe that all groups can be absolved at all times from all moral responsibility for all their joint actions. Such a belief would be a mere extension of Eichmann's plea — that he acted only as a member of an organisation and is therefore personally innocent of the crimes for which he has been condemned. Such an argument is equally unacceptable when advanced as justification for the men responsible for the com- parable crimes committed in Russia and China (and in Angola, Algeria and Cuba).
The political system which our society has evolved for itself demands that our rulers at all times pay lip-service at least to certain tenets of morality. And our public opinion usually presses our rulers towards rudimentary justice and decency, and has even been known to get rid of them when they fall below a certain standard of behaviour. This is often a lengthy process during the course of which hypocrisy can be sadly in evidence. But to main- tain that a country which has been governed, of its
own choice, by a Gladstone or a Lincoln acts in- variably from the grossest motives of, power and self-interest would seem to me historically, incor- rect.
Finally, sir, in my article I in fact adyocated that we feed the starving regardless of the regimes be- neath which they are forced to live, but that we do not allow despotic regimes (as opposed to their vic- tims) to profit from our charity or to steal the food we send their people.
CONSTANTINE F ITZG I BBON
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