GERMANY’S DESPOILERS

Evening Star, Issue 23371, 14 September 1939, Page 14

GERMANY’S DESPOILERS

EXILE'S PROPHETIC ANALYSIS NOBEL PRIZE WINNER'S OPINIONS Below is an extraordinary Jotter written nearly three years ago by Thomas Mann, Nobel Brize winner and greatest of exiled German writers. As published in the Melbourne ‘ Argus ’ it reads:— To what a pass, in Jess than lour years, have they brought Germany! I'uined, sucked dry. body and soul, hy armaments with which they threaten the whole world, hindering hopes of peace, loved by nobody, regarded with fear and cold aversion by all, it stands on _ the brink of economic disaster, while its “ enemies ” stretch out their hands in alarm to snatch back from the abyss so important a member of the future family of nations, to help it, if only it will come to its senses and try to understand the real needs of the world at this hour, instead of dreaming dreams about mythical “ sacred necessities.” The mature and cultural States—by which I mean those which understand that war is no longer permissible—treat this endangered and endangering country, or rather its leaders, as doctors treat a sick ir.au—with the utmost tact and caution, with inexhaustible. if not very flattering, patience. But it thinks it must play politics—the politics of power ami hegemoii3 r —with tho doctors. WOE TO WAR-MONGERS. That is an unequal game. If one side .plays politics when the other thinks first of peace t then for a time the first reaps certain advantages. But woe to the people which, not knowing what way to turn, at last actually seeks its way out through the abomination of war, hatred of God and man! Such a people will be lost. It will be so vanquished that it will never rise again. The meaning and purpose of the National Socialist State can be only this; To put the German people in readiness for the “ coming war ” by ruthless repression of every stirring of opposition; to make of them an instrument of war, infinitely compliant, without a single critical thought, driven by a blind and fanatical ignorance. Yet even this leading idea defeats itself. No other people on earth is today so utterly incapable of war, so little in a condition to endure one. GERMANY FORSAKEN. That Germany would have no allies, not a single one in the world, is the first consideration, but the smallest. Germany would be forsaken—terrible, of course, even in her isolation—but the really frightful thing would be that she had forsaken herself. Intellectually reduced and humbled, morally gutted, inwardly torn apart by her deep distrust of her_ leaders, her war, after the first inevitable defeat, would turn into civil war. No, this war is impossible; Germany cannot wage it; and if its dictators are in their senses they must perceive the impossibility. But if war cannot and shall not be—then why these robbers and murderers? Why isolation, world hostility, lawlessness, intellectual interdict, cultural darkness, and every other evil ? Why not rather Germany’s reconciliation with Europe, with all the inward accompaniments of freedom, justice, well-being, and human decency, and a jubilant welcome from the rest of the world? Why not? Only because a regime which, in word and deed, denies the rights of man, which wants above all else to remain in power, would stultify itself and he abolished if, since it cannot make war, it actually made peace! But is that a reason?