NAZISM IS NIHILISM

Evening Star, Issue 23371, 14 September 1939, Page 15

NAZISM IS NIHILISM

“ Nazi power is truly a Nihilist power,” says the ‘ Yorkshire Post.’ “ It frowa by destruction —for it hates and estroys, if it can, anything it cannot understand or absorb. And it holds nothing sacred but itself. “ It would, of course, be an absurdity to imagine that this temper of mind is solely confined to Germany, though it is true that in Germany it finds its most complete and unqualified' expression just' now. But the worship of success, especially of material power and size, and of many of those trappings of success which power and money can secure, is not unknown m England. . “ There are plenty of English people who are inclined to think that in the world as we know it force, power, moncv, and the things they achieve, are the real things, by the side of which spiritual truths appear remote and

unpractical. In fact, however, that is not so. Without a vision or ideal, man developes a malaise of the soul.. The society which has lost hope lose* energy, and collapes from inner weakness. “If Europe could be imagined aa subdued under Nazi rule—-reduced to a slave-peace by the Prussian jackboot —Europe would die For tne_ Nazi kind of materialism has nothing to offer but more and inore conquest for the German, and more and more subjection for other races, “ To that process obviously there are limits, and when they are reached this particular gospel has no more. to say. It contains within itself nothing constructive. It has no message of culture—it is, indeed, inimical to true culture.” -