To: letters@thetimes.co.uk
Subject: FORGETTING PECCADILLOS?
Janice Turner believes we should not judge the actions of historical characters by today’s standards. Would she apply different criteria to, say, 1918 and the 1930s?. You reprinted a piece on 14 July from 14 July 1918 fully supporting a mass meeting in Trafalgar Square, where a motion was carried with acclamation that naturalized British citizens of German origin be stripped of their British citizenship and interned without trial. The fact that your correspondent noted no dissent suggests that the meeting might have been a template for a Nuremberg rally in the 1930s.
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 shared the spirit of the London motion. Support for the motion came from the Lord Mayor of London, the entertainer Harry Lauder and the writer Rudyard Kipling.
How many years must pass before we are to remember Goebbels and Hitler with admiration?
Donal Kennedy
P.S. Janice Turner’s article defended the continuing honouring of Kipling by today’s university students in Britain.
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