The world response to Prince Harry's Afrika Korps costume has been mad. It makes me fear for the sanity not of the Royal Family but of the British press.

Prince Harry is a 20-year-old private citizen. He is not a member of the British government nor of the diplomatic corps. He is not a head of state, nor even a head of state in waiting. He holds no public position or status, except as a very junior member of the Royal Family. The likelihood of his ever being king is, perhaps mercifully, slim. Nor did he don his costume on a public platform or at a public occasion. He was at a private party. That a member of the Royal Family should ever portray himself as a German soldier - even one assigned to a general who died opposing Hitler - may seem tasteless. But for goodness sake, so what?

Hypersensitivity to group feeling has now moved from political cult to raging obsession. It is being enshrined in a new anti-blasphemy law. I am sure that when I was at school I played Britons versus Nazis, not to mention cowboys and Indians, doctors and nurses and a variety of other politically incorrect games. That a soldier-to-be should dress up at a private function as an old enemy is hardly the end of the world. The former proprietor of The Daily Telegraph publicly idolised Napoleon. Is there a statute of limitation on dictatorship?

Prince Harry's action was tasteless and, once publicised, insensitive to those still living who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. I am sure a bevy of historical advisers would have recommended the Afrika Korps insignia but not the swastika.

No one supposes Prince Harry was "a Nazi". He was making no political statement. He was not portraying himself as anti-British, anti-Semitic or an advocate of Auschwitz or the Holocaust. He made an error of judgment both in his choice of regalia - the swastika is illegal in Germany - and in believing that any party is ever going to be private with him around.

But I repeat, so what? Such incidents become "issues" only when journalists choose to make them so. They telephone publicists and beg them for a critical quote. Once shaken, this cocktail needs nor further stirring. By today we had comments from the German embassy, the Israeli government, the European Union, the Conservative Party, survivors of Auschwitz, Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. The story was leading every news agency worldwide. In the face of such hysteria, the prince's apology was considered not big enough. It did not pack the requisite news punch. There were demands for him to appear in person, possibly to scourge himself in public, do penance, stand in the stocks. Perhaps he should push a pea with his nose to Jerusalem.

We have lost the ability to express proportion. There is no longer such a thing as an accident. There is only a catastrophe. Whatever happens is "big news", unless something else turns up that is bigger. Someone somewhere, preferably a celebrity, must be involved, be blamed and, with luck, be sued or sacked. Public figures no longer make mistakes. They make "massive errors of judgment" for which they must resign or be roasted alive. This is almost medieval. However minor, and however sincerely regreted, a mistake may be redeemed only with trial by ordeal.

Der Spiegel's Matthias Matussek complains in today's Evening Standard that "it is the British who have a problem with Germany's past". Every day we run movies and old newsreel portraying the British as military victors and the Germans as beasts. We satirise the goosestep and treat the swastika as fancy dress. We depict Germans as a cross between our own lager louts and our own British National Party. Sixty per cent of our young people have never heard of Auschwitz.

This is wrong. But we do not help it by having hysterics when the "third in line to the throne" commits an error of judgment. Does this mean that, were he 30th in line, German battledress would be unexceptionable? We should all grow up. So in time will Prince Harry.

• E-mail your response below
• Well, I guess a person should never underestimate the public's desire to flex their self righteousness muscles. Your article is honestly the only sane thing I've read about this entire ridiculous non-story. Nate Volkerding, Kansas City

  You say that the chance of Harry becoming king is, “perhaps mercifully, slim”. However, the last two kings, not counting the abdicated Edward VIII, were both younger sons; both George VI and George V inherited the crown, rather than their older brothers. So the chance does not seem as slim as all that. That picture will never go away. Just imagine if the King could be constantly shown as a young man in a German uniform complete with Wehrmacht badge and swastika armband, fag in one hand and drink in the other. No, what he did is not evil, but it has revealed him as a brain dead Hooray Henry, grossly insensitive and quite unfit to represent his country at any level. S. M. Mead, London

  The continuing demonization of the symbols and the uniform of the Third Reich bestows upon them a dubious glamour and gives them a status they do not deserve: by making them forbidden we invest them with the appeal of the illicit. It is only by making these symbols a commonplace that we will empty them of meaning and devalue their currency. Jonathan Stiles, Turku, Finland

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