ITALIANS AND GERMANS

Sm. — Mr. O'Brien quotes Mr. Churchill to support his view that there is a considerable difference of responsibility between the Italians and the Germans. The only distinction in Mr. Churchill's broadcasts appears to be that while he has a respect for the military might and genius of Germany he has nothing but a biting contempt for that of the Italians.
As for Italy', part in the conditions that led up to the war, he really ought to be better informed of the history of Europe, particularly in respect of the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference. At least Streseman, then German Chancellor and Foreign Minister, as far back as 1927 seems to have expressed some anxiety about the aims of Mussolini—an anxiety which Sir Austen Chamberlain, then British Foreign Minister, sought to allay. Furthermore, nothing has quite shocked the civilised world as the cynical wars on Abyssinia, Albania and Greece, and it was Italy which developed the rule of castor oil and concentration camp and who permitted in silence the murder of Mattiotti.
For Mr. O'Brien to answer the question of Germany's warlike traditions in the last century by saying it's a matter of " (he Germans " is to make nonsense of the entire history of British Labour's propaganda to the effect that war is an inherent result of the stresses of capitalist economy.
However, this division of nations into guilty and not guilty parties is worse than useless. You cannot judge a whole nation and one would imagine that the first duty of a Catholic in these critical days is to see beyond the dust of battle and prepare the European mind for the better democratic ordering of things. Mr. O'Brien's method of doing this can have only one effect: the growth of new prejudices and smouldering hatred.
ALBERT I. SEAGER.
6, Speedwell Avenue, Cossham Road, St. George, Bristol, 5.
[We should have thought that the comparative internal mildness of Fascism (i.e., as compared with Nazism) argues either the greater suitability -of Fascism or the much greater
perversion of the Italians. In either case, Mr. Tom O'Brien was making a poor case. EDITOR, C.H.1