And if it were a matter of getting rid of political enemies, then it would not have been only a few Maltese who were interned, but the entire ‘Nationalist Party’.

Most of those interned were not even politicians, which undermines your argument.

You don’t understand much about what separated the Progressive Constitutionalists from the Nationalists of the time if you think it was the former who believed in oppressing free speech and silencing enemies.

Short-term internment was a small price to pay compared to that paid by the legions of men aged 19 and 20 who never got to leave their coffins in the way the internees left the camps.

I’m a little tired of having the internees portrayed as some kind of heroes. At best, they were victims of war.

The real heroes are those who fought and died; the bigger heroes are those who were not career soldiers but who volunteered to fight (and die or be maimed).

Yes, Mr Sammut, that’s how it was done in every country on each side in World War II, not just in Malta.

The only Nazi sympathisers who were allowed to run around free in Britain were those whose aristocratic (or even royal) connections protected them.

The reasons why should be obvious.

And in Malta the British interned all the foreigners plus those MALTESE nationals who were arbitrarily considered as enemies of the state.

It’s not an opinion you need. It’s the actual facts.

Think about it. If the fact was easily available then, would the lives have been spared?

No need to go back and forth on this. We have an information gap between us.

Not everything is as it seems. Perhaps it would be better were everything out in the open.

It is like the situation of old, where a pregnant daughter is hidden away out of shame and then years later things catch up. Better to properly expunge what really happened, than to present the palatable form and have history catch up with a twist more cruel than the hidden fact.

You know, there are times when I despair at the way ‘Maltese history’ is written, studied and considered in isolation from general contextual history and real events.

Shall I spell it out? In every country involved in World War II, whether on the Axis side or the Allied, nationals, ethnic groups or political sympathisers of the opposing force were exiled or interned for the duration of the war.

Maltese people living in Italy at the outbreak of war were interned by Italy because they were British subjects.

Japanese emigrants in the United States were interned in camps in the US when Japan entered the war.

Britain interned nationals of enemy countries throughout the empire in both world wars.

I won’t go on. All you have to do is Google ‘internment and internees in world war’ and you will have the context you never got through the Maltese education/political propaganda system.

It had nothing to do with the internment of Lord Strickland’s political enemies – that is puerile propaganda and the fruit of Maltese ignorance about the world beyond Malta.

All the internees were summarily taken on a cargo ship (the Breconshire, I believe) without any court hearing their case.

Basically all the political enemies of Lord Strickland were put together with Italians, Germans and Maltese pro-Italians and fascists. Colonel Strickland had a hand in all this.

From what I read I can form my own opinion, and I did not read Ganado’s book only.

Herbert Ganado cannot possibly have had a balanced view of the internees issue, by definition.

Ok, by and large I agree with what you’re saying, but I still find that Gozitans have a code of silence between themselves.

I’ve seen how they fix their problems in their particular way without any authorities being involved. In Malta things are more under public scrutiny.

Talking about Freemasons: do you know that there’s a Gozitan ‘secret’ lodge?

About the internees, did you read Herbert Ganado’s “Rajt malta tinbidel”?