BLACK RECORD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 107, 11 July 1941, Page 4

BLACK RECORD

Sir,-I would be glad if I could share your belief that Sir Robert Vansittart has acted wisely in publishing the text of his "butcher bird’ broadcasts, but I believe he would have better served our cause had he allowed them to slip as rapidly and as unobtrusively as possible into oblivion. The radio audience, as anyone who has listened to propaganda will appreciate, has a short memory, and one had reason to hope that the harm done by Sir Robert’s illadvised and provocative talks would in time be dissipated. This latest development however, which seems to’ be dictated more by personal vanity than by high policy, appears certain. to perpetuate the crowning blunder of a career which, from the diplomatic point of view, is a black enough record in itself. I may be misjudging the man. His advice may not have been taken by the Governments which he has served, but if that were the case, he would, one feels, have resigned before this. The only conclusion to which one can come to is that the foreign policy of the British Government before and after September, 1939, was, in the main, approved, if not suggested by him. That being so, we are-presented with the disquieting deduction that Sir Robert Vansittart was as assiduous in feeding the butcher-bird before September, 1939, as he has been in shouting at it since then. ; : The pernicious racialism on which the talks were based is, of course, as lunatic as the talks themselves were improper. Over 100 years ago, when Canning was pleading for the recognition of Greek independence, he pointed out that a nation of a million souls could not be regarded as pirates. How much more ‘irrational it is to condemn one of eighty

millions, however misled they may be

(Auckland).

AUDAX