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Well, all historians make mistakes. -But there is a difference between negligence, which is random in its effect, and a deliberateness which is far more one-sided. All Mr. Irving's little fictions, all his tweaks of the evidence, all tend in the same direction, the exculpation of Adolf Hitler. He is, to use an analogy, like the waiter who always gives the wrong change. If he is honest, we may expect sometimes his mistakes to favor the customers, sometimes himself. But Mr. Irving is the dishonest waiter. All his mistakes work in his favor. How far, if at all, Mr. Irving's anti-Semitism is the cause of his Hitler apology, or vice versa, is unimportant. Whether they are taken together or individually it is clear that they have led him to prostitute his reputation as a serious historian in favor of a bogus rehabilitation of Adolf Hitler and the dissemination of virulent anti-Semitic propaganda.