Letters | 7 December 2017

The Carlile report

Sir: The Bishop of Bath and Wells tells us (Letters, 2 December) that nobody is holding up publication of the Carlile report into the Church of England’s hole-in-corner kangaroo condemnation of the late George Bell. Is it then just accidental that the church is still making excuses for not publishing it, and presumably for fiddling about with it, more than eight weeks after receiving it on 7 October? The church was swift to condemn George Bell on paltry evidence. It was swifter still to denounce those who stood up for him, falsely accusing them of attacking Bell’s accuser. Yet it is miserably slow to accept just criticism of itself. Somehow, I suspect that, had Lord Carlile exonerated the apparatchiks involved, his report would long ago have been released. May I commend to the Bishop the words of Our Lord (Matthew 5:25): ‘Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him.’
Peter Hitchens

London W8

Why the war went on

Sir: Simon Kerry’s article (18 November) about his grandfather Lord Lansdowne’s peace proposals during the first world war is a rare gem. Much of the focus of published works has been on the causes of the war, but virtually nothing has been published on why it continued for as long as it did.

My father, Colin Clark, was an Oxford academic who repeatedly claimed that a peace accord was on the cards right up to 1916, pointing out that the royal family only discarded their German titles that year. This coincided with Lansdowne’s memo of November 1916 which was knocked down by Lloyd George. My father never revealed his sources for this assertion, but claimed that Lloyd George, together with Beaverbrook and Churchill, were responsible for killing off peace proposals.