THE GERMAN OUTLOOK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 631, 3 August 1951, Page 5

THE GERMAN OUTLOOK

Sir-I have no doubt that listeners to "Some Impressions of the German Liberal Middle Class" from Station 1YC will have been impressed by the sincerity of the speaker, Mrs. Phoebe Meikle. It is to be hoped, however, that they will also have taken to heart her warnings about herself: she has spent only a few months in Germany, and knowing no German, has never read a newspaper in that language or conversed with a German in his own tongue. Is such a person entitled to give radio broadcasts concerning the German outlook at the present time, a most grave subject to say the least? Mrs. Meikle has with the best inten‘tions succeeded in giving a most distorted picture of her subject. That not so much as a whisper of the strong and

vocal hostility felt by the Germans for their French occupiers reached Mrs. Meikle will astound anyone familiar with the German outlook in the French Zone and elsewhere. On the other hand, I can assure listeners who have been disturbed by the sombre general picture drawn by the speaker that it would not be difficult for me to quote experiences (carefully selected) to paint as rosy a picture of the country as Mrs. Meikie’s has been dismal. The truth is, of course, between the two extremes, Present-day Germany, like France, is a strange mixture of vigour and despair, of hope and nihilism. I write this letter to voice the distress felt not only by myself, but by other friends and colleagues who, having had some real contact w&h Western Germans in recent times, regard "Some Impressions of the German Liberal Middle Class" as a lop-sided and even harmful presentation of certain contemporary

J. A.

ASHER

(Auckland).