[An young English Quaker relief worker in Germany.] Seven Autograph Letters Signed from 'David' [to the Tennant family?], describing in vivid terms his work in Lower Saxony (Harzburg, HIldersheim, Goslar) in the aftermath of the Second World War.

66pp., 12mo. In very good condition, on lightly-aged paper, each of the letters kept together with rusty staples. All the letters are signed 'David' and addressed to 'My Dear All'. Accompanying them is an envelope addressed in another hand to S. W. J. Tennant, Beechcote, Brands Hill Avenue, High Wycombe, and this may provide a clue to the identity of the recipients, to whom 'David' makes it clear on a couple of occasions that he is not related, signing off one letter 'from your muddle-headed friend'. The letters are written in the tone of a journal, with dated entries describing the his actions and impressions. As the quotations given below indicate, they are extremely informative, and paint a vivid picture of a country laid in ruins. The author is an intelligent, idealistic young man, and he writes with great insight and sensitivity. As a Quaker his viewpoint is unconventional, and this adds to the value of the writing: he strives to be fair, even discussing 'the good side of nazism' and 'hypocrisy' of the Allies. He is extremely self-critical, and despairs of his inability to make friendships with the Germans he has come to help. ONE: 28 and 31 March, and 1 and 2 April 1947. 6pp, 12mo. The letter, reporting events in the Goslar district of Lower Saxony, begins: 'March is leaving us like a lamb, but a frisky one with tricks in her trotters. Today was a sunny friendly day, but yesterday we woke up to a white world of cold, wet snow.' He reports that he has 'delivered some baths - old, tin tubs to the Goslar Halle today. Up till now they have only had a hip-bath - and two hundred people live there. A wash-house has recently been made there. We have supplied two field-ovens. They will now have facilities for boiling, washing, drying clothes. Up to now the women have struggled away with a bucket in their dismal dormitories; and during the winter the clothes have been dried there too. [...] In this great hall where Hitler used to celebrate the annual agricultural day & make his speeches, a scattered handful of his subjects dry their under clothes.' He now describes the German palm-Sunday: 'As we walked through the streets on Saturday evening, we saw that two young fir-trees guarded the door of every house where a child lived who was about to be confirmed - for fir-trees are one of the few things which are plentiful here. Early Sunday morning the child who lives furthest away from the church begins. He walks to the next house, strewing sand as he goes. Then the two together walk on to the next house where a child lives who is going to be confirmed, and they make a path of sand as they go, so that they all come dry-footed to the church. And so it goes on , snowball fashion, till it becomes a great procession of children, and in the end they walk down a[n] avenue of little fir-trees which stretches from the road to the church door.' He discusses 'Yvonne' speaking at a meeting, and to a day spent in Bad Harsburg, where the 'Resident Officer' tells him: 'We have no real power now [...] and my primary aim is to build up friendship between England & Germany.' In the afternoon he meets with a 'small circle of teachers'. On 1 April he spends the dawn 'out in the villages with a Red-Cross sister. The more I see these sisters at work the more I realize that we have no contribution to make out here as social-workers, because they are so patently more efficient than we could ever be [...] The sister is new to this district so she is now going round meeting all the Red Cross workers in the villages, [...] in one village we went to there was only one such worker while in the next village there was an active group of women, about 10 or 12 of them, all with some nursing training, together with a loose group of about a 100 women who are on call in case of sickness. One definite reason for this great difference was the personality of the woman who had been arranging the womans work for the last ten years. Yet that woman is now on the shelf, and not allowed to play any further part, because she was a member of the Nazi Party. We find this difficulty again & again - the people with gifts of leadership were through their very qualities active citizens during Hitler's time; it is only the weak & colourless (apart from the small minority of resisters) who have a clear record as nazism goes. [...] It is difficult for us in England to appreciate on the one hand the cruel difficulties which resistance to nazism involved, or on the other hand to appreciate the innocuous appearance which the nazi regime presented to people, especially the country & village type of person.' "David" does not believe 'a better example of the good side of nazism could be given than this question of women's work. The Germans are idealists, and nazism appealed emotionally to much that was good in their idealism - especially to the ideal of service to the community. Thus women were encouraged to help their community by nursing etc, and a highly efficient sort of womens voluntary service scheme seems to have been arranged.' It is now especially difficult for the young, who 'gave their allegiance and [...] find they have been deceived [...] In as far as it went it was all very noble.' He describes what is, in his view, the 'difference between the nazi & Christian ideal'. On 2 April he describes how 'the house' in Goslar 'is in a bit of a turmoil', ending the letter with 'the giving of eggs, chocolate or hen-produced'. TWO: 3 to 8 April 1947. 10pp., 12mo. He describes the arrival of the Young Friends, and of 'Barbara' from England. He despairs of his inadequate German, before discussing a 'talk (in German)' by 'Harold'. On 5 April: 'In the morning a discussion on Dictatorship - very uninspired. Then in the last few minutes one girl brought up a much more burning moral issue. "How far can one rightly condemn the theft of coal & food when it is a question of life or death for the people who have these things? And how far can we Germans help the need of our fellows when we have nothing material whatsoever to give?"' He watches a sunrise with 'Malcolm' and 'Harold', a 'local parson's wife brought us a lovely dish of snowdrops and sprigs of palm, & all set in moss. There were four hens eggs which she had painted with rabbits.' Following a 'Meeting for Worship [...] In the evening we climbed the Rammelsberg all together and lit our Easter bonfire. This seems to be a very old German custom - especially in the Harz area, and there were bonfire burning in answer over the whole region, including the Russian zone.' He describes the meeting around the bonfire, quoting W. H. Auden's 'September 1 1939'. He describes his work ('business sessions', preparing an exhibition and an English lesson), before explaining the reasons for his admiration of 'Wolfgang'. In a postscript he describes a visit from a German man who had 'worked in England for several years as a gardener. First at Kew, then with a German Baron, then for the King at Sandringham. Apparently King George V could talk German well, & while this man was interned 1914-18, Queen Mary looked after HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN.' THREE: 27 [May] to 1 [June] 1947. He describes 'the conference of the conference of the German Fellowship of Reconciliation [...] There were representatives from Sweden, Denmark, France, Switzerland, England, America & Germany'. He particularly enjoys a talk by 'a French parson (now the World Secretary of F. o. R.) about his experiences during the war in Vichy France, and his struggle to uphold the integrity of his pacifist, Christian beliefs.' He then describes 'a wrangle between the supporters of organised religion & those who said that right living was all that mattered', describing the Germans as 'often intense & long-winded & dogmatic when they discuss'. He is impressed by the intervention of 'Elizabeth

Howard', quoting her as saying 'Well! I am only an old lady, [...] but I do know that fresh air in a room is better than hot.' He is also impressed by another speaker, André Froomé, who is 'now running an international school at La Chambon, the village where he is a Pastor'. He describes 'two unconscionably hectic days': 'Among the more amusing requests I had over these two days was from a Roman Catholic Pastor who pleaded with me for some cotton to stitch up his holy glad-rags which seem on the verge of falling to pieces. He also badly wanted some soap to give the altar-cloth a wash. Soap is so desperately needed for medical work that I told him I could get none officially, but I might be able to squeeze him a bit of my own toilet-soap, since I thought the holy trappings were more important than my face'. FOUR: 28 June 1947. 6pp., 12mo. He describes his birthday celebrations, before turning to 'My school-teacher friend in Harzburg, Müller-Hartmult, [who] has been asking some of his boys whether they would be willing to come with us and help on our summer work-party amid the ruins of Hildersheim.' The request has been met with 'a great deal of pessimism and distrust among the boys. And at least 4 criticisms express. One boy said that supposing they went & helped clear the ruins & make a playing-ground (which is our aim) then military governments would only come along and requisition it for the children of officers' wives.' Other criticisms are described. He reports that 'The whole area in which we work is being injected against typhoid. There are now 5 cases in the village which had an outbreak last winter, there are a bunch of cases spread over another 4 villages, and a swing in another has been condemned as dangerous.' There are rumours of 'impending war with Russia [...] Even those people who think that Russia has too much rebuilding to do, to make war at the moment, none-the-less think that it is only a question of time'. He describes an 'At Home' evening: 'we had an exchange of English & German folk-songs. I was playing chess (lost every game!) with the lads, but it sounded very lovely through the french-doors'. Later in the letter he writes: 'Thursday afternoon I met the class in Harzburg again. They were having one of their periodic mathematic exams the next day, so there was only a handful there. We fell to discussing the future of Germany. Oh dear! we were soon in a tangle of criticisms about concentration camps, military government, mass-bombing, starvation & the Nuremburg trials. It was no use to anybody. In the end one of the lads - (the one who has a home in a summer-house & is almost exactly my age) - turned to me and said, "Let us talk no longer about these things." It all showed me how I have got to help them to rise above the ugliness, and that it helps no one to dwell on it.' FIVE: 1 to 6 July 1947. 6pp., 12mo. 'I was awoken at ten past six one day this week by a young boy, who often comes up here to play chess. He wanted to borrow a car to try & catch a thief who had stolen all his goods.' He discusses the boys background, expressing concern about him. He spends a morning 'up in the forests, sawing woods with a bunch of the boys from the secondary school'. He describes a weekend spent in a village 'in a remote part of the country' SIX: 19 July 1947. 20pp., 12mo. He begins with a detailed discussion of the Russian situation. 'The Russians seem to have little respect for human personality (as can be seen from the callous treatment of war-prisoners, and the casualness with which they seem to shoot their own soldiers)'. He is pessimistic regarding the world situation: 'People seem unbelievably tired: they seem too confused, too absorbed with existence, too full of bitterness and loss to have time or desire to pause and listen to the song of love. Man has lost faith in man.' He explores the problem, before a long discussion of his own mother, and of his doubts as to his capacity for love. He returns to the Russians: 'There is a whole cluster of stories about Russian stupidity - regular chestnuts. Such as the story of the Russian soldier who bought an alarm-clock on the black market. He put it in his ruck-sack and it went off. The clock starts to ring: he thinks he has been sold a time bomb. He puts his pack on the ground and shoots at it with a rifle!' Regarding alleged Russian cruelty: 'One often hears the remark that the eastern, the asiatic Russians (what are often referred to as "the mongolic type") are not men but beasts. To retain my sanity sometimes I have to think of the claims of Jap and "Chink" cruelty (also Eastern peoples) & then reflect on the artistic culture which is revealed in "A House of Exile" or a "Daughter of the Narakin." It is an idea which has too strong a hold - that all non-European nations are of inferior type.' He compares the Soviet regime with 'Hitlerism'. What the Germans 'find so difficult to stomach' is that 'they see the "Great Powers" committing many of the same crimes which they condemn the Nazis for. This is outstandingly so in the case of Russia; but the British, American occupation is by no means free from cases of callous inhumanity & dictatorial methods. We smashed their cities to smithereens; we are (from the viewpoint of many Germans) keeping them under by denying them food.' He describes how he has organised amateur dramatics for the boys ('St Joan' and 'R.U.R.'), and various discussion groups, at one of which 'Captain Brookes' is present. Two things have been brought home to him: 'the fundamental wrongness of an army of occupation' and 'how difficult a thing it is for our two nations after a great war to come together in friendship'. He laments his failure at 'the most important task [...] that a relief-worker has got to do - the making of deep and close friendships with young people of my own age'. and is extremely self-critical at length on the matter, feeling that in one way he has 'misfired' all his life. The letter ends in an anguished tone. SEVEN: 27 July to 2 August 1947. 10pp., 12mo. The entire letter discusses two weeks spent camping 'with the lads and lasses' in Hildesheim, and includes a discussion of the bad food and results of undernourishment: 'All the masses of little boys were running around in nothing but little trousers, & were as brown as boot-polish. All very nice, except you saw how thin & bony they all were. A doctor comes and examines each group - and he has certified nearly all of them as undernourished. | Some of the poor urchins belonged to a sports-group, and had to get up at 7o/c and do fantastic gymnastic exercises.' He ends with a description of Hildesheim.