Sensible scares
Sir: To be fair to the scaremongers (Another Voice, 19 July), at least some of the scares mentioned by Matthew Parris (al-Qa’eda, HIV) seem less frightening in retrospect not because they were always insubstantial but because the threats were taken seriously and action was taken to counter them. If the fuss over the threat of Aids in Britain now seems excessive, might that not be because it changed people’s behaviour? In other words, there is some social value to scaremongering from the press and public agencies.
Robert Bargery
London E1
Saint Pius XII?
Sir: Pope Pius XII was described by Golda Meir, the then Israeli foreign minister, as ‘a true friend of the Jewish people’ at the time of the Pontiff’s death in 1958. His consistent anti-totalitarian policy towards both the Nazis and their blood brothers — the communists — deserves better than the calumnies of Gerard Noel et al, who propagated the modernist Catholic myth of ‘bad old Church pre-1962’ (before Vatican II) and see Pius as the representative of that institution. Andrew Roberts (Books, 19 July) should be aware of the disgruntled ‘modernist’ Catholics who see their youthful 1960s radicalism being steadily undone by the present Pope, who is a worthy successor to Pius XII.
It is worth mentioning that when the chief Rabbi of Rome, Emmanuel Zolli, converted to the Catholic faith in 1948 he chose the baptismal name Eugenio in honour of Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) for all the assistance he gave to the Jews during the time of Nazi persecution. I look forward to the day when Pius XII is canonised.
Andrew Gray
Via email
Sir: Andrew Roberts’ acknowledgement that Pius XII failed to protest vigorously against the massacre of Serbs by the Croatian Ustasha regime evokes a wry smile from this Serb.
There should have been no surprise when the Krajina Serbs objected, in 1990, to being railroaded into a secessionist Croatia led by Franjo Tudjman, who was unrepentant about the Ustasha’s crimes. Yet most outside observers, including the Vatican, accused the Serbs of unnecessarily dredging up the past.
Tudjman’s 1989 Wastelands of Historical Reality, a revisionist whitewash of the Ustasha, was dismissed as an unfortunate slip of the tongue, and his proud boast during Croatia’s first free elections that his wife was neither Serb nor Jew was deemed a mere indiscretion, while his subsequent withdrawal of the Serbs’ constitutional status as one of Croatia’s two historical nations was brushed aside as a petty detail. No wonder the Krajina Serbs took up arms. The Krajina Serb nation was ethnically cleansed in 1995. It is owed an apology, and not just by Zagreb.
Yugo Kovach
Twickenham, Middlesex
An intrusive ‘g’
Sir: Toby Young (Status Anxiety, July 12) tells us that ‘Joseph Epstein, a retired academic’ coined the word ‘Kindergarchy’. The pedant academic in me considers that the intrusive ‘g’ should be removed though the resulting ‘kinderarchy’ is perhaps not as euphonious.
I trust that the oligarchy of Taki the Greek and Dot Wordsworth would agree with me.
David Heath
Westcliff on Sea, Essex
Demonising paedophiles
Sir: Charlotte Metcalf hopes the convicted paedophile Roger Took (‘The Devil in our midst’, 12 July) will read her words ‘with particular care’. I wonder how she would wish Took to react to her labelling him ‘a monster’, and bemoaning the fact that his opulent Chelsea home made it harder to ‘view him as a freak’. Perhaps she hopes Took will look at the devil on the front cover, and see himself?
The dehumanisation of paedophiles is all too common in tabloid journalism, of course, which seeks only to stir up public rage. But if we are ever to comprehend the psychology of paedophilia, then the opportunity for more sober and thoughtful journalism should not be wasted. How disappointing, then, that Ms Metcalf’s crude and literal demonisation of Roger Took should do just that.
Gareth Hall
Nyköping, Sweden
Inaccessible material
Sir: Charles Leadbeater (‘The web is a conservative force’, 12 July) may be right that the internet enables us to record for posterity more of the ephemera of our daily lives than ever before. But will posterity be able to read it? The Domesday Book is nearly 1,000 years old, the Dead Sea Scrolls around 2,000 years old and the Minoan tablets in Linear B well over 3,000 years old — all can be read, and while none are easy to decipher for the layman, it takes just human intellect to do so. But I cannot put my old 51/2 inch floppies in my new PC and even if I could the computer would not be able to read them; the operating system I used to create them is obsolete.
Far from a cornucopia awaiting them, future historians may find that while there is certainly an abundance of material for their researches, it is all tantalisingly inaccessible.
John Nugée
New Malden
The pastrymaker’s revenge
Sir: Charles Moore notes (The Spectator’s Notes, 19 July) that croissants were invented to celebrate Jan Sobieski’s defeat of the Turks outside the walls of Vienna in 1683. In view of this, he wonders ‘how much longer will European society be permitted to serve this daily humiliation to Muslims with their continental breakfast?’
The art of baking kruvasan, as they are known in Turkey, is alive and well in Istanbul. The newspaper Aksam recently reported that French tourists make a beeline for one particular bakery near Taksim Square. Having breakfasted there daily throughout their stay, they then take some back to France to show their local patisserie how superior the croissants of Turkey are. Revenge, in this case, is a dish best eaten warm.
Osman Streater
London NW3
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