MENTAL DEBILITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 June 1941, Page 7

MENTAL DEBILITY

TERRORS USED BY HITLER. ( I Weariness can sot in long before] men's energies are exhausted, writes Professor Gordon Allport, of Harvard University. Chronic tiredness is a mental state, not corresponding as closely as most people think to physiological exhaustion. Such tiredness is almost always a symptom of conflict in the mind, of a lack of wholeheartedness. Such conflict often brings on a condition of physical lethargy wherein a person, deprived of energy, gives in. Continued physical strain, of course, ultimately creates in its own right a desire lor submission, for beyond a point no mortal can stand hunger, thirst, noise, lack of sleep, torture, or separation from bis fellows. Hitler uses all these terrors when he needs to break morale. Yet morale may deteriorate long before such physical extremity is reached, ft did so in France; it may do so in America. Years of unemployment. we are finding out, have created in the United States a perilous "what's the use" frame of mind wherein resistance to the blandishments of totalitarianism is greatly weakened j—- —