GERMAN CHARACTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 December 1939, Page 6

GERMAN CHARACTER

♦ EVIDENCE OF SIMPLICITY. There seems no escape from the conclusion that the German is not a good dissembler nor a good mixer, writes Mr W. J. Blyton in the "Quarterly Review.’ He must say, in a raised voice, all that is in his mind. And what is in his naive mind is something so raw and simple that more experienced, civilised, and mannerly races cannot believe such simplicity exists. The toil on our part is superrogatory. He is what he appears and means what he says. The fairy godmother has given to some, at the cradle, every gift save one, the gift of living with others on a basis of cooperative equality, with give and take, suspension of one’s optimum wishes in view of further gain, and the knowledge that half a loaf given is safer than a whole loaf snatched. If character is destiny, so is some hole or flaw in character. That flaw mattered little in the older Germany, which was not cut off by itself from foreign educative influence, and which had not a programme of domination. German strength lies precisely in the realms of thought, peace, industry, and domestic order: its weakness in world-adven-tures among ideas, types, and forces which are subtle)-, older and stronger. We can be calm about the ultimate end of the transient Third Reich, which does not consist of political adults and is not led by psychological adults. It has reached a cul-de-sac. and has met various things harder than itself — harder, maturer, subtler.