* * * * For all who know, and try
to understand the Germans, will agree with me that there is a profound duality in the German character. On the one hand there is envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness: on the other hand there is kindliness, humour, and a general cleanliness of mind and body. I do not deny that the Germans possess to an almost morbid extent the more combative and competitive instincts of man, and that they have failed in all these cen- turies to evolve any workable sense of co-operation. Yet they also possess in a marked degree the quality of obedience, which is not merely obedience to some stronger authority, but obedience to a theory which has once been accepted. For, whereas one side of the German dice is marked with the word " Refusal," the next surface bears the happier word " Acceptance." Had we, in 1919, in 1923 and in 1929, not rendered acceptance intolerable the dice might never have been turned by Hitler upon the side which dis- plays refusaL When I speak of " enucleation " I mean that it is refusal which must now, by bitter means, be rendered intolerable ; and that acceptance must be rendered comfort ing, dignified and profitable.
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