"BLESS 'EM ALL."

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 161, 24 July 1942, Page 3

"BLESS 'EM ALL."

Sir,-At your recommendation I have read Bless ’Em All and have found it the most stimulating thing for months. Its general criticism of the British Army : is too good not to be true. But I am not as impressed by the author’s conclusions as you seem to think I should be. Surely they are based on a fundamental, inescapable contradiction. In one place he argues vigorously that, in order to beat the Nazis, the British Army needs as officers a generous sprinkling of scoun-drels-"clever criminals carefully selected from thugs, thieves, gangsters, racketeers, dope-peddlers, forgers, big business men, and City financiers." The rest of the officers can be mainly drawn from "the miniature totalitarian states" of Eton and the other public schools. Agreed: for as the author himself admits, "The best man to fight a Fascist is a rival Fascist." But at the end of his booklet we find the author fervently proclaiming the need for "a vision aiming high . . . of the new England, new Europe, New World we are making. That is the only thing which can lift. the British Army from the ruck." Agreed again: but is there anyone ingenious enough to reconcile these two: opposites; anyone able to tell us what sort of "high vision" would be acceptable to, or would be produced by, an army officered by Fascists and scoundrels? And how would it differ from the "vision" of the Nazis? :

THINK AGAIN

(Wellington).

(Our correspondent finds his "fundamental inescapable contradiction" in a condensation of his own that leaves out most of the author’s best points.--Ed.)