MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD
NICOLSON
MANY impulsive people are already tempted by the entry of the United States into the war, and boy the possibility of a major German disaster on the Eastern front, to weave schemes for the future Germany which shall succeed to the ruins of the Third Reich. I agree that the collapse when it occurs will be both sudden and total ; we shall not see some slight crack in the facade widening slowly into a fissure, nor will the pediments, the statues or the balustrades topple one by one ; the heavy house will stand immutable until the last moment, and when it falls it will fall almost silently in a gigantic heap. Long before that, of course, it may happen that the army decides that Hitler is too expensive a luxury and that we read one morning that, on the advice of his doctors, the Fiihrer has retired to Berchtesgaden for a prolonged rest. That will not mark even the beginning of the end, and we should indeed be foolish were we to suppose that in causing Hitler to disappear we had won the Second German War.
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