Whose God is the State
II...RIM-EH:S. Unofficial foreign secretary has been in London this week sounding British opinion regarding Germany. He can have had little difficulty in reaching a conclusion. Rarely has this nation been more nearly of one mina on anything than it has been in reprobation of the excesses that have marked the political upheaval which Herr Hitler has inspired. The treatment of the Jews his been the most shameful feature of the whole re-orientation, and in face of the official decrees that have robbed thousands of Germany's best and most able citizens of a livelihood it is idle to suggest that the guilt lies on private irresponsibles and not on the Government. Herr Hitler, whether as the leader of the Nazis or the Chancellor of the Reich, could have checked the outrages as effectively as he has directly and indirectly incited them. But it is not Jews alone who suffer. To be a Communist, or a Socialist, or a pacifist,. is an offence against the ruling spirit in Germany today. For a man to say what he thinks to a friend—tenfold more to say it in a public place and a-hundredfold more to say it in print—is to expose himself personally to physical violence and his family to starva- tion. These are plain facts, established by a constantly growing mass of irrefutable testimony, and not all the Goebbelses and Rosenbergs in the world can shake belief in them or modify the impression they have every- where created.
What is happening in Germany today is that all that is vocal in the nation—a minority of little less than 50 per cent. has been terrorized into silence—has been converted by disastrous prophets to the worship of false gods. Everywhere the worship of Germany is proclaimed, a misconceived, disproportioned, deformed Germany shaped after the narrow and myopic idealism of Herr Hitler and his lieutenants. Their god is the State, or if you will, the race or the nation. At any rate the new religion is Germanolatry. Even the Christian churches, whose followers at least confess another God, have to recognize that The Old Testament, we arc told—the report is symptomatic even if the intention is never carried out—is to give place to the old German sagas, perhaps because the motif of the Old Testament is the worship of the God of Israel. But it is a new Germany that is worshipped today. Iron is the sacred metal, Charlemagne's iron crown, Bismarck's iron chancellorship, and so far as God has place, "God who made the iron grow." The Germany of Goethe and Set-Hier, th2 Germany of Wagner and Mendelssohn, is forgotten. The Germany of the humanities, the Germany whose name has been given honour throughout the world, in science by Einstein, in literature by Thomas Mann, in music by Bruno Walter, in the drama by Max Reinhardt, is a GerMany for which the Germany of the moment has no thought and no use. Walter and Reinhardt have lost their posts ; Mann's books are being burned ; Einstein has 'refused to set foot again in the country Germany has become. Even, ironically, Fritz Haber, whose prbduction of nitrates from the air alone made the continuation of the War possible for Germany, has resigned his post, refusing to remain on the strength of his War-services when the rest of his Jewish colleagues have been driven from their chairs. And, meanwhile, in the universities, from which the ablest teachers have been expelled, the students have become a greater power than the faculty. They pronounce for or against a given professor, leaving his lectures in a body if they consider him to fall short of their own ideas of nationalism, In this worship of Germany, this infinitely Wearisume invocation of terms hie Aryan and Nordic, there is no true patriotism, no nationalism that is not perverted „lid distorted. In Germany's great history there is much of which every German may be proud. But it is mainly what the new dictators of opinion are forgetting or discarding. Their Germany, the Germany of marching armies and baited Jews and a silenced opposition and a muzzled Press, is a throw-back to conditions which the civilized world has long outlived. Instead of marching with the times Germany has set her face to the past and severed herself thereby deliberately from nations whose eyes are on the future. Germans complain that English- men misunderstand the new Germany. The trouble may be that we understand her too well, and see better than so e Germans themselves where her new guides must inevitably lead her. It is not we who have changed, but -errnany. Our convictions and ideals are what they were. The Main signs of progress in the world in the past generation have been a growth of respect for the reason- able rights of the individual and a growth of belief in the inevitable interdependence of nations. Out of that our conception of the State is shaped. It has its relation to the individuals who compose it on the one hand, and on the other to States like itself with whom it seeks to live . in harmony. In its citizens it recognizes the right to live their lives as they will and express their opinions as they -choose so long as they do nothing thereby to infringe the _reasonable rights of others. It aims at imposing no dead uniformity, recognizing that out of a peaceful clash of views truth and wisdom are most likely to emerge, and that to have both sides argued is as useful in polities as in a court of law. Over the widening field in which it co-operates with other States in a world in which no • State can live alone its aim is, so far as may be possible without sacrifice of essentials, to seek its own good in the pursuit of the general good.
On one side of the State stands the individual, on the other stands humanity as a whole. The State has its relation to both, and it is because of the relations being created in the Nazi Germany in each case that the Nazi Germany has inspired such general and profound distrust. Of the attitude of the German State towards the individual it is needless to say more. With all Socialist papers extinguished and the rest of the Press rigorously censored and the Government in command of the radio, the individual is not free so much as to think except as the Government dictates. He cannot form political judgments if he would, for the data are denied him. The attitude of Germany towards the world demands closer study. An utterly false antithesis has been proclaimed between nationalism and interna- tionalism. That contrast exists only if nationalism is made someth2og narrow and exclusive and provocative and defiant. It is for Germans to ask themselves of what species their nationalism is today. What bearing has it on war and peace?. Herr Hitler and his Ministers have declared repeatedly that they stand for peace. The assurance is welcome, but men who aim at peace must inculcate the spirit that engenders peace. Within Germany force has been given free rein. The Brown Army. is supreme. The individual has been helpless against it, and it has been spectacularly exhibited in mass in the May Day parades. Can autocratic ruth- lessness rule at home and a spirit of restraint and com- promise prevail in relations with other States ? It is not surprising if other States gravely doubt it, particularly after what has been happening at Geneva, There, if Herr Hitler's emissary is concerned to know them, are the views that Nazi Germany has 'inspired out- side Germany. They spring not from prejudice against Germany or dislike of her, but from a deep appreciation of what Germany has contributed and could contribute to the world, and an anxious fear that all the world has admired in her is in: danger, and that a new Germany exhibiting far less admirable qualities is taking shape. With a Germany whose gospel embraces free- dom for the individual and co-operation with States outside her the world will never be reluctant to clasp hands.
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