Letters: Xenophobia: more sad than serious

Sir: The way in which foreigners, and especially just now Germans, are coarsely mocked in the popular press makes me long for some really distinguished and internationally respected British public figure, - a retired statesmen like Douglas Hurd, for example, or Edward Heath - to write an open letter to the editor of a few leading German newspapers explaining that this apparent xenophobia is not as dangerous as it seems, and may be more sad than serious. Such a letter might make these points:

To the ordinary British mind, foreigners seem funny. Our national brands of humour and satire have rested heavily, for hundreds of years, on the perceived funniness of foreigners. This is no doubt rude and regrettable and increasingly risky, now that our country is half-a-century into an era of unstoppable internationalisation, but it is a fact of our insular culture, and one might hopefully reckon that at any rate it is better than finding foreigners, first of all, unpleasant; which I don't believe we any longer do.

Amazing as it may seem, the way in which the Second World War is popularly perceived makes it partly funny too. The references made to the war in tabloid shock tactics is grossly tasteless and must strike Germans as hostile, but I don't believe it usually is meant to be so. Of course it signifies ignorance and irresponsibility and a sort of grown-up childishness, but it can be explained as a consequence of our very peculiar the Second World War experience.

Our rather relaxed popular perception of that war is, necessarily, untroubled by recalled direct experience of such un-funny things as totalitarian government, material destruction on scales unexampled even in Coventry and the City of London, casualties on scales unimaginable to ourselves, and finally, the humiliation of enemy occupation.

Insular "winners" who happened to do it with relatively little hardship, and who have subsequently been allowed by their governments to saunter uninstructed into community with Continental former allies and enemies who, some of them, suffered much more and who cannot find any fun in their memories, must hope for a little sympathetic indulgence.

Of course one would prefer prominent persons in our present government to take the lead in apologising for our xenophobes, but by now I have to believe that the best we can hope for from them is silence.

GEOFFREY BEST

Oxford