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New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 127, 28 November 1941, Page 4

Sir,-Your correspondents of last week demand proof that Captain Ramsay is, in fact, a fool-I suggest you demand that they produce evidence to show that he is not. If they say that Ramsay is not foolish, they regard as wisdom his association with doubtful characters, and his admiration of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. If they maintain that it is unfair to doubt his common sense, they doubt the judgment of the court that heard his foolish action for libel against the New York Times. And if they criticise The Listener or The Economist for hanging on this peg their stories of "the right people," then they forget that a British Air Minister said not long before Dunkirk that we were as strong as Germany in the air; that a British Prime Minister said before Poland was wiped off the map that our strength had become great enough to frighten aggressors; that the Admiralty was so slow and so late with its preparations that the entrance to Scapa Flow was wide enough to let a submarine in to sink the Royal Oak. These and a hundred others, who were all "the right people," though they were not guilty of treason, were certainly guilty of great foolishness, which itself is treasonable in high places, whether they are occupied by the right people or not. Who but "The Right People" left Gordon at Khartoum, sent the Light Brigade on a stupid charge in the Crimea, supplied our soldiers there with left-foot boots and kept the right-foot boots at home, fought the Boer War by the methods of Agincourt, sent barrack room troops against the Maoris in the New Zealand bush, and maintained an army of thousands of unemployed for a least a

year aiter Uunkirkr

AORANGI

(Wellington).