29 AUGUST 1941, Page 10

Let us assume, therefore, that in the course of the

last eig years the Germanies have been able to acquire not mere]) unitary Reich but also a unitary soul, and that this soul sickened by a restlessness which five times during that period has brought misery to Europe. In order to define t malady it is not necessary to agree upon the nature of the cat which have produced it. It may well be that some poison Art brewed in the Mark of Brandenburg and in the wastes of Prussia by the mingling of the Teutonic Knights with Sit immigrants, and that this poison gradually infected the m sedative Germans of the South and West. It may be that th constant lack of geographical, racial, political and even religio outline _inhibited the gradual growth of self-reliance as we ha known it in our own island. Yet the fact remains that the exists in the German soul a persistent uneasiness which th themselves are apt to define as " morbid subjectivity," but is rather a conflict between extreme self-assertiveness extreme self-distrust. The reason why Hitler was enabled become the great shaman of all the Germanic tribes was he understood the exact nature of this duality, and was able his revivalism both to assuage their self-distrus:- and to id their self-assertiveness. Yet upon what unstable foundan has he built his tragic experiment! Since even the to fanatical self-assertiveness is subject to the law of dimini returns and becomes satiated when whole continents have drenched in blood ; and since when once the lust of vic flags, the pang of self-distrust tugs once again at the Ge soul and the calm faith in destiny becomes a twitching sense doom.