FEAR OF REVOLUTION

Hokitika Guardian, 20 August 1931, Page 3

FEAR OF REVOLUTION

FEELING IN GERMANY TO-DAY * COMING WINTER DREADED. < As one goes about Berlin talking to the people one becomes more and more conscious of the tension, the sense of nervous expectancy, and the inability to penetrate the darkness ' which shrouds the coming winter, writes a correspondent iii “The Economist. Tile shadow of the Winter of 1931-32 already has cast its chill and gloom over the summer’s ligliti and warmth. In German minds to-day the advent of next winter portends the end of the world. What do the Germans fear? They fear an almost automatic political revolution when the economic pressure which the Government is putting upon individuals becomes at last quite intolerable. The Government are determined, as far as they are concerned, not to repeat the history of 1922-23. They are taking draconian measures to keep the public economy and the public finances of Germany sound. But these measures arc all taken at the private indiTidual’s expense in the form of drastic rationalisation, which swells the ranks of the unemployed in the middle as well as in the working class; drastic reduction of unemployment benefits (already startlingly low on English standards) and of official salaries; drastic increases in taxation, direct as well as indirect.

Economic Sacrifices Resented. The fear is that at the sharp touch of next winter, the individual may he goaded into political revolt against the personal economic sacrifices that nre being demanded of him by the State. Which do they fear more: the National Socialists or the Communists? The Germans to whom T talked and almost all of them belonged to the moderate .middle parties between the two violent extremes—did not seem to regard the distinction as very important. “The young men will overthrow the present regime as Nazis and then reign in its stead as Communists, was a frequent reply. What is in a name? The reality is that, in the preesnt state of Germany, mid of the world, the young men of'ail classes in,Germany ar© in a revolutionary frame of mind, which threatens, by next winter, to express itsell in actum unless the situation changes in the meantime.

My German iiilone.anls dul. howev°r distinguish very clearly between the disinherited and exasperated you n g men of this class and that. I lie ldghet the class, the greater the technical qualifications, the deeper the 'disillusionment. And, accordingly, that majoiitv of people in Germany^—and T believe it is still a majority—W'hich dreads revolution is particularly afraid of the “Akademiker”. the youiig men who have been through the universities to qualify as doctors aikl lawyers and engineers, and to find themselves stranded as an unemployed , intellectual proletariat. These, one hears, will he the spear-head of the revolution —as Hitlerites to-day. as Communists to-morrow, but as revolutionaries day in day out.

Emotional Irrational Good. They are revolutionaries not because they believe that this revolutionary programme or that will bring them salvation (for that matter, all these programmes are remarkably vague), hut because they are frustrated and disillusioned ■>' their own individual lives. The spur that goads them is emotional and irrational. “Life has misused us! We .will hit back at wherever wo can see a target; hit back at the Government, the capitalist, the Jews, the foreigners I No matter, so lung as we strike a blow. We cannot make our own position. worse, and by some miracl© we may niake it better. At least we .shall enjoy the satisfaction of relieving our feelings! At the worst. wo shall perish out. of a world which has given us nothing to live and work for!”

This is the rising not-orti'evolutionary despair in Germany. But, through its strident tones, one can also hear, albeit faintly, another note which sings, not of the vindictive destruction of the world, hut of a retreat from this world to another. Even in Hitlerism there is a strain of what one might unkindly call “uplift,” or, more sympathetically, asceticism, renunciation, spirituality.

But, apart from this, and by its nature almost unorganised, there is now on foot something like a religious movement in Germany. a revulsion from the materialism of tile modern Reich to the idealism which reigned during the preceding age of adversity. The strength of this movement cannot he expressed in statistics.

Perhaps it can lie gauged by tile strength of the regard for Dr. Bruening, the man of the hour, who is also a map of religioawjf Dr. Bruening has so far-succeeded, without precipitating a revolution in obtaining from his countrymen one material sacrifice after another, it is because his countrymen ' now that the Chancellor’s personal life is austere and unself-seeking.

Dr. Bruening may faji, as'many heroes have fallen’, in. venturing upon superhuman tasks. But the spirit which lie symbolises—“three-quarters saint and one-quarter Prussian”—will assuredly survive in Germany, even! if the waters of revolution are destined, next winter to go over her soul . In the ordeal of. great nations, creative evolution finds the chance to do its work.