Letter from Harry Massey to Barbara Massey

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No, our whole attitude & system will have to be most thorough, very methodical & rather subtle. The first two & the last are not easily found together. The English did in fact make themselves quite popular & well like during the occupation after the last war. They found the German people starving & gave them food from their own rations - & thought they were not such bad people after all - & they settled down & played a lot of games & behaved quite well, & there were many marriages. The French, on the other hand, behaved very badly & were very ill disciplined - & so we also gained by comparison.

And I think that much the same thing will happen again - we are said to be a forgiving race. The German people will profess to be overjoyed to be rid of Hitler, etc. & they are a servile & obsequious lot when they have not the upper hand. And so the Army will occpupy them again & settle down - things will go along quite happily. The Russians, on the the other side, will probably be very different & so again we shall gain in German eyes.

We shall have to be full of iron & super realistic & maybe some sensible instructions will be given by the Government & Higher Command - but I still cannot see the regular army officer being any earthly use. If he can find some German people of his own class who will invite him to a pleasant house for a good dinner & good wine & who will get him some riding & perhaps polo too -

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& who will tell him that he never approved of those low class Nazis & had always liked England & when the war came he just had to do his duty as a German officer, that will be that - the men will follow suit in their own way & fraternisation will set in on a grand scale. And the officers will come home on leave & some of them will have dinner with their local Ms. P & tell them all this, that we must not be too hard on Germany - they suffered enough under Hitler, all that nonsense. And the whole process will begin again & this may all sound very petty & loathing, about such a vitally important matter, but I firmly believe that such things have an important affect on our policy, in any case, when the old gang of Conservatives are in power - & even when they are not, through the permanent officials.

Incidentally - talking of Conservatives - I also think that we must have "Proportional Representation" in the election of Parliament, as soon as possible. Do you know about that? Under the present system, a member is elected for an area, irrespective of the population under the P.R. system, population is the controlling factor. Any other system is [?] & grossly unfair - for years, the Conservative party has had a majority of votes in Parliament & a large amount of votes in the country.

But, back to Germany - the Army will have to do their policing & security work, but they must

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be controlled, they will have to lead their own life & not be allowed to run anything.

The whole German attitude of mind must be changed. I think that, as a people & a nation, they feel themselves important & to have a destiny. And they have some right to such feelings, as they have a large country & there are 60-80 million of them, & they are able people. But they are terribly anxious - over anxious - to be liked & nobody does like them. And so the only alternative is for them to be feared & respected because of their strength. And after they have been thoroughly defeated, probably ravaged to a certain extent, & after what will certainly be pretty tough peace terms, they are going to be pretty low & will immediately begin thinking again of how to rise again. And this is going to be the time when our important work will have to begin. They must learn that force & going to war are not the proper or the best means of settling arguments & differences - that such methods just should not exist & that war is not a glorious, brave affair. All those ideas will have to come out of their thinking & teaching, & we shall have to see that they do.

Germany will have to be completely disarmed - no cadre or anything left to her - & so will France & Italy & every other possible country. And so, the U.S.A. & Russia & China & Japan too - will have to agree on rapid, & drastic disarmament. This will take time, but it must be done & then the League of Nations in an extended form will

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have to rule the quarrels & differences of the world. It seems to me wrong that a Peace Treaty should aim to give countries strategic frontiers & bases to go on. The means to make war should be removed & the league should have inspecting officers going round every country to see that no one is doing any quiet building or preparing.

The main points are that Germany must be punished & made to suffer - but she must also be lead into right ways - & armies must be done away, with except for policing purposes. Apart, entirely, from an other consideration, war is so ridiculous & rubbish. And yet we glorify it in certain ways. Before the war, an officer is a rather special person - a Colonel commanding a battalion was incomparably more important & higher in the social scale than me commanding W. North & Co - or your father commanding Peter Robinson 2rd. But that is also going into the depths of class distinction - which is not exactly within the scope of this letter - though it probably has an exceedingly important bearing on the whole affair.

And about religion - I should very much like to read "God in relation to the world was" - I hope you have been able to get a copy to send to me. I agree that the present form is badly out of date - & worse than that are most of the silly & foolish fatuous parsons who try to put it over. But I do think that religion has a

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place & an important one too. The teaching of the New Testament is so very right, it does provide a moral code of life - I think that is very necessary. But the "high ups" in the Church are mostly such bloody fools - & they have completely missed their opportunity of doing good - quite apart from an increased fervour towards Christ. The A-B of Canterbury is the worst of the whole bunch too. It is speeches about Russia, since she became our ally, have been criminal, & almost amount to 5th column. To put it bluntly, the bloody old fool shared he told to keep his muth shut - maybe he has been told so by now. But I think the church are wishing - if they have not already missed their opportunity- I think it is a great pity.

But darling one - I must finish the letter & go to bed - it is 1.0 o'clock. I hope to goodness this is not all frightfully boring & that you will not curse yourself for having talked about those things in your letter & thus brought all this down upon your head. But it does allow me to get a few things off my chest, even if they are rather at random. Adn I have nobody at all to talk to.

I shall probably go on in this strain from time to time - unless you tell me to stop. Since I began this, America has repealed