5 MAY 1939, Page 14

Since then I have heard younger and less inert people

echoing the same toothless optimism. For them it was a " hopeful sign " that Herr Hitler's vituperations were concentrated upon President Roosevelt and that his refer- ences to ourselves, to France, to Poland and even to Russia were not of a definitely menacing nature. Had such people devoted more time and more intelligence to the study of Mein Kampf they would have known that (apart from the Fiihrer's passion for mystification) this concentration upon a single enemy was a definite element in his dem- agogic theory. " In order," he wrote in his Koran, " to achieve success, one should never allow the masses to con- ceive of the possibility that they might be faced by more than one enemy at a time." " Above all," he writes again, " the art of the great demagogic leader resides in this, that he should be able by concentrating upon a single opponent to avoid diffusing the attention of the masses . . . Should the opponents of his country be diverse and inspired by con- flicting motives, the test of his genius as a leader is his ability to make it appear that they all really belong to one single category."

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