A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
REARRANGING some books a few days ago I came on a copy of Otto Strasser's L'Aigle Prussien sur L'Allemagne, bearing the inscription Hommage de Otto Strasser, and having inside a note from H. G. Wells, dated January 5th, 1942, thanking me for the loan of the book. Why Strasser should have sent me an inscribed copy of his book I don't know, for I don't think I ever met him, and why Wells should have wanted to borrow it I know as little. But his Fomment on the volume and its author would be singularly pertinent today, if it were not too pungent for reproduction, for Strasser, after seven or eight years of exile and eclipse, has suddenly become 'almost front-page news. He was, of course, violently anti-Hitler ; his brother Gregor was killed in the 1934 blood-bath ; but nothing could be more dangerous than to accede to his desire to return to Germany from Canada, where he has been living for the last few wears. Precisely what line he would take if he did go back is pn possible to say, but it would clearly be hostile to the moderates itong Germany's present leaders, who are in a difficult enough ation as it is. There appears to be some doubt whether Canada let Strasser out. Even if it does it would be folly for the Occupying Powers in Western Germany to let him in. He could hardly be capable of the mental gymnastics that would make him ersona grata in the Soviet zone. His type of nationalism is hardly ,compatible with Communism.
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