29 MAY 1941, Page 11

MADNESS AND METHOD

By E. L. WOODWARD

HE has no pants, No socks, No money, No method.

This short poem was composed, or at all events chanted, by a Chinese houseboy. I find it a satisfactory poem even in translation. As good a poem as most poets could make out of ten words. It rises at once to a climax, like the peak of Teneriffe, stark and abrupt above the levels of ordinary thought. It is a statement, a " universal," as the logicians would say, concerned with absolute disaster. It describes the damnation of the damned. Compare with it the bright optimism of W. E. Henley's Invictus: " My head is bloody but unbowed." In the Chinese poem there is neither pride nor defiance. There is, as I say, only the damnation of the damned. Lasciate ogni speranza. No pants. No socks. No money. No method.

Now I am not without a proper opinion of my own judge- ment, and I dislike being " caught out " in my forecasts. I also disbelieve in underrating the malice of the King's enemies. Yet, seriously and soberly, I cannot help thinking that this poem applies aptly to Adolf Hitler. Obviously Hitler has no money. I am not interested in anything he may choose to wear beneath his over-correct chauffeur's uniform. In these grim days it may sound a paradox to say that he has no " method." I maintain, as a solidly considered view, that, from the standpoint of the highest strategical and political vision, it is far more of a paradox to describe Hitler's reflex actions, directed towards blind destruction, as " method."

The German General Staff has " method," within the boundaries of a crabbed, unpolitical field of view. (I say " un- political." No body of men with political foresight would adopt plans which involved holding down most of Europe, and, if necessary, part of Asia, as well as alienating all America. The gigantic political mistake of the Schlieffen plan a quarter of a century ago has taught these militarists nothing.) As far as we are concerned, though some of our public figures tend to forget it, we are fighting, not only Hitler, but the German people organised as a nation at war under the direction of the German General Staff, and I should not be foolish enough to belittle the military methods of the German staff or the courage of the German soldiers. But Hitler. I repeat that Hitler has " no method," and, looking at the creature sub specie aeterni- tatis, neither pants nor socks.

Hitler has, of course, cunning, cruelty, wariness, patience, and all the qualities of a thwarted and nerve-racked megalo- maniac who wants to get his own back from a society which seems to have undervalued him. He does not possesss " method " on the grand intellectual scale, the type of con- structive " method " which distinguishes men from the beasts of prey. With " method " Hitler might have won this war without fighting it. Even a slight change in the order of his " pounces," a slight variation in his political patter might have been enough. In the military field Hitler and the formidable German General Staff might have won the war before the spring of 194o.

Hitler and the German Staff have now lost the war in the sense that Germany had lost the last war before the end of the year 1914. We have had a narrow escape, but we have escaped, and it is no longer fanciful to describe the headlong victories of the C erman armies in terms of the headlong rush of the Gadarene swine. In the hard tests of these months, with suffering around us, with suffering ahead of us for an unknown tale of days, it may not always be easy to realise that, unless we allow our hands to falter, the chances of ultimate victory are indeed overwhelmingly with us. In some respects, we can see the turn of the tide most plainly in the prevailing mood of the German people. Not that, as yet, they expect defeat. Nevertheiess, unless there is a conspiracy among all neutral observers of Germany to mislead us, the Germans as a whole, other than youthful types conditioned to war and obedience and to nothing else, appear unable to give themselves up to enthusiasm for their victories. A Frenchman, before the first abdication of Napoleon, described his country- men as " a nation of perplexed spectators, who have lost entirely the habit of interfering in their own destiny." Such a nation lives in Germany today. There has been too much organised shouting in that country since 1933, as there was too much self-pity before 1933, but there are special reasons why a people which passed through the cycle of years from 1914 to 1918 should be uncertain whether a series of victories does mean Victory.

Historical parallels are often misleading, and sometimes dangerous, but it is worth remembering that, when Napoleon was at the height of his power, Metternich, whose mind was as sharp as any mind of his or our generation, observed one fact of cardinal importance. Napoleon had tortured Europe.

He had destroyed old, and made new, combinations of States.

He had not done anything to render permanent any one of his new creations, and there was about them no sign of stability.

Sooner or later, the whole system would collapse. Napoleon had " method," and illumination, until, blinded by success, he, too, lost all sense of " limits," and fell to the level from which Hitler has never risen. Napoleon was doomed when he began to think that, because few men are clever, all men are fools, and that, because some men can be cowed and others bought, all men will surrender, for all time, everything which they most prize.

It is said that the instruments of domination are stronger today. In fact, they are no less vulnerable, and, in many respects, more vulnerable, than they were a hundred years ago. The German military machine is as mighty as that of Napoleon, but there is no comparison between the European order established by Napoleon, in his most splendid period, and the confusion which the Germans introduce as they extend the orbit of their dominion.

The collapse of the goose-step and Gestapo empire is certain, and although it would be unwise of us to think too often of victory until this victory is completely in our hands, there is every reason why we should see now the significance of what we are accomplishing with such pain and trouble. We are writing the verdict of history upon Adolf Hitler and upon militarist Germany. The verdict upon Hitler will be pitiless. No one laughs at Napoleon, but posterity will laugh at Hitler ; the anger and loathing, the saeva indignatio of today will dissolve years hence into an ironic laughter. " In such and such a month Adolf Hitler—Adolf Hitler, of all men—set him- self out to be master of the civilised world." And the German people? For their acquiescence and their part in gross evil, they will be held to account. Upon their accumulation of folly, their submission of mind, decade after decade, to blather about Odin and Wodin, upon their bleak and dreary cult of the sword, their false heroics and their love of death, the judgement of world-history has already been written in words which prudent nations have always feared to provoke. He that sitteth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn: the Lord shall have them in derision.