PRUSSIAN AND SLAV Snt,—While approving of the fundamental idea of
my article in your issue of March 29th, "Germany without Prussia," Mr. Henry Gottorp seems to misunderstand its statements concerning the Slavonic origin and character of the Prussians. If that may well have a depreciating meaning in the eyes of a Nazi, I certainly used it only to differentiate and not to graduate, the real Germans belonging to the old western, Greco-Roman, Christian civilisation and the Prussians to the younger, fundamentally different Slavonic sphere.
While the individual nations within both these spheres differ widely in their accomplishments and their contributions to human progress, so that it was far from me to identify Czecho-Slovakia's democratic or Poland's artistic performances with Prussian militarism, Austria's historical role as a strong- hold of that western civilisation, as well as the sad experience of her past within an essentially Slavonic Empire, seem to bar a reconstruction on similar lines. But all that has to be left to the decision of the peoples concerned, and my suggestion (shortly to be presented more elaborately in form of a book) was merely meant to show the root of the evil, the source of that aggressive, that anti-social spirit that has destroyed the tender plant of supra- or international organisation.—Yours
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