Guns Or Butter

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 45, 16 November 1940, Page 15

Guns Or Butter

In the Nazi theory there is uo room for any process of appointment of such masters, uor for any menus of settling who in fact knows belter, nor for any method of investigation into the relative merits of one object or another. The leader is a thing given a prophetic revelation descending, as bis adherents allege, from heaven, emerging, as his opponents believe, from the slime. The policy in which the wills of all are to join their enforced cooperation needs no investigation. Like tlie leader, it is a thing imposed without doubt or question, to be accepted without criticism, or to be rejected with the extremity of peril. “So it is laid down that guns are better than butter, matter ’is more important than mind, cruelty more praiseworthy than culture, barbarism more desirable than the worship of God. It all comes back to this, Power is given or assumed of arbitrary decision, both on policy and methods, based on irrational force, and issuing in complete control of human lives.

“We do not say that such a system is uot effective, for its own ends and within its special limitations. For gaining quick results, such as a lightning victory over the unarmed or the rapid demoralization of nations which are sick in soul, it is the most effective system yet invented.

“But on a longer view it is a system bound to fail, for rational intelligence is not a quality confined to self-con-■stituted mandarins, and conscience has a disconcerting way of reasserting its claims.—The “Church Times.”