A tribute by Rabbi Professor Dr Gollancz
Yet another young and promising member of my congregation has been added to the roll of those who have fought and bled in the cause of their King and country. This time it is Capt. Raymond Litten, of the Royal Berkshire Regiment. It seems but as yesterday when he was a small boy; but to those who had the opportunity for observing him closely, he soon showed that he had a big brain and a big heart; and we feel that had he lived he would have done great things. His own utterances on the sorrowful theme uppermost in all our minds at the present hour will reveal the character of this young officer more clearly than any words of mine. “You know my views on the real holiness of this war,” he wrote in the last letter received by his stricken family, and written a few days before he fell. “It is, in my opinion, frankly a case of the evil versus good. The victory of Germany would mean the crushing down of all that is good in her own people, the discouragement of all the good that is in the Allied peoples, and the encouragement of all that is cruel and base in the peoples of Asia and America.” In a letter dated July 1915, and found among his papers, he expressed himself as follows: “Why should I quail at the thought if death on the battlefield, fighting for a country that I love, for a cause in which I intensely believe, and by my death doing service to the race from which I am sprung? Don’t grieve over much for me. I am not lost. Nothing is really lost. And don’t cherish hatred against Germany or against the Germans. This thought would really hurt me. Rather feel sorrow for the hundreds of thousands of German women who are in your position. And if you would see the end of the war, try and end those instincts that breed war. Chief among these instincts is personal hate.” Reading such sentiments expressed by a young man we feel that we have lost not merely a precious life, but one who was a thinker and somewhat of a philosopher. It must be some comfort to the bereaved to receive from the Hon. Secretary of the Sylvan Debating Club the assurance that “Captain Litten will be greatly missed and always remembered among the members. All of us liked him and respected his high character, and admired his brilliant intellect.” It is with special interest, too, that I recall his attendances at the Clifton Social and Literary Society, held for several years at my house under my presidency, for the benefit of the young people of the district. And I, therefore, pray with other friends that Heaven may grant to his heart-broken mother, who has lost her only son, and to his sisters deprived of a devoted brother, that measure of comfort and solace which they sorely need in their sad and sorrowful trial.