Why not stop abusing Prince Harry and start thinking?

‘We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.’ Macaulay’s famous castigation of humbug, apropos of Moore’s Life of Lord Byron, applies perfectly to the sententious huffing and phoney indignation heaped upon the silly head of Prince Harry for wearing Nazi uniform at a fancy-dress party. Ye gods! Are we never going to be allowed to consign Hitler and the Nazis to history, where they belong? In April it will be 60 years since Hitler’s final defeat and death. How long do we have to wait before those dreadful times can be seen in a cool perspective unclouded by emotions, especially false ones whipped up by newspapers like the Sun, a media pachyderm with the brains of a shrivelled pea? It is said that Harry’s offence was even more rank and smelling to heaven because of the approaching anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But there is some kind of anniversary of Auschwitz every year and there is no possibility of the public ever being in danger of forgetting it. Moreover, when are we going to have any anniversary of the Gulag, a horror-system which actually killed four times as many people? Elements of the Gulag were still operating as recently as the 1980s, with people dying of starvation there. The wounds are still fresh.

Anyone can go to Auschwitz — I have been there myself — and it is Polish policy to ensure that every Polish child sees it during his or her schooldays. But it is not so easy to visit former gulags or the site of the famous Arctic canal where so many of Stalin’s political prisoners froze to death. Indeed it may be that some bits of the Gulag are being kept in reserve or even being reactivated.