Sir, - Is there no end to the number of self-righteous and morally superior sounding people pouring out their venomous vituperations on the venerable head of Francis Stuart? Mary Matthews (November 5th), like the others, does not produce a scrap of evidence to prove that Mr Stuart was either a Nazi or an anti-Semite.
Paul Durcan, in an earlier letter, pointed out the errors in Kevin Myers's article and showed that Francis Stuart identified with the Jewish character against the antiSemitism of his wife, Iseult. On one occasion he saw broken and barricaded windows in a Jewish quarter of Berlin and wondered if the names over the shops had been those of his Jewish friends, Isaacs, Gollancz, etc. Would they feel he was betraying them by being there? As far as I know, his publisher, Victor Gollancz, was Jewish. Why would he publish the books of an anti-Semite?
Nor was Francis Stuart a fascist or a Nazi but simply a teacher of English literature in a Berlin university. Yes, he made some broadcasts to Ireland, but when asked to inject Nazi propaganda into them, he refused.
I have no special axe to grind for Francis Stuart except inasmuch as I admire his writing and feel strongly that he has been misunderstood by his accusers. Far from being sympathetic to the persecutors, he has always taken the side of the victims. In his writing he has endeavoured to have the reader step imaginatively into the victim's shoes and feel the pain. As he wrote in an article for the Crane Bag magazine, "it is this act of imagination that leads to compassion and makes every act of cruelty to man or beast intolerable." Are these the words of a Nazi or anti-Semite? - Yours, etc.,
Lr Churchtown Road, Dublin 14.