* * * *
It is inevitable after five years of atrocious war that our judge- ment should be clouded by. the emotions of fear and hatred. It is thus salutary to reflect that such emotions are seldom logical and not often lasting. I have always considered the Nazi doctrine to be the most dangerous and evil doctrine ever devised by the mind of man ; intrinsically, however, it was just as evil in 1938 as it is in 1944. There is no logical reason why I should feel more bitter about it 'now that its more recent manifestations have exposed me to acute personal fear than I did six years ago when its cruelty was already apparent and when I knew that it would lead inevit- ably to a second German war. The danger of allowing hatred to affect judgement is that hatred with us must always be a tran- sitional mood and that in permitting it to tinge our thought we may commit the error of confusing momentary symptoms or personalities with the root causes of the disease. Our enemy, the evil thing that we wish to conquer and eradicate, is the Nazi doctrine. We shall not eradicate it if we behave like Nazis ourselves. We shall only eradicate it if we convince the German people as a whole, first that we possess overwhelming power, and secondly' that we are pre- pared to use that power to defeat the Wehrmacht in the field ; and then show them that there are ways not dreamt of in their forceful philosophy in which power, by civilised peoples, can be used.
Previous page
