MARGINAL COMMENTS
By FRANCIS GOWER
GERMANS making a spectacle are an impressive sight. There is no doubt at all about that. If anyone did doubt it the best cure for his scepticism would be to end a holiday, as I did, with a couple of days at the Nuremberg rally. Of the political aspects of it I have nothing to say. That would not be a marginal but a major comment. But no one could see Germany at Nuremberg, and bits of Germany outside Nuremberg, without acquiring a variety of diverse impressions. And some of them, I think, are worth setting down.
Only superlatives can describe the magnitude and pomp of the national Party Rally. It costs Germany more than the Coronation cost us and it has to happen every year on an even larger scale. This year the participants numbered over a million, including the spectators. The delegations from every local branch, of the S.A. and the S.S. and the Hitler Jugend numbered about 200,000, nearly all of whom had to have an extra week's holiday with pay in order to attend. And that costs somethi -g. The combined camps around the city occupied a mighty area one and a half times the size of Nuremberg itself,—and Nuremberg is no village ; it has 600,000 inhabitants.
Every major display, whether by day or night, was a triumph of spectacular art. It was also a solemn ritual, mystical, religious and pagan, with Adolf Hitler as the high priest. The architecture of the two main arenas was in keeping. They are vast open-air temples, specially built for these ceremonies and each holding upwards of half a million worshippers. The microphone transmitted the spoken word better than the acoustics of any cathedral. " These great occasions," said the Nazi Press, " are our true German Gottesdienst."
Contrasted with the political excesses (like the blatant display of the anti-Jewish Stiirmer), and the wasteful junketings at Nuremberg is the solid achievement of the Hitler Jugend, the Arbeitsdienst and the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy). Here, in my opinion, we have something to learn. A movement which is doing for six million boys and girls under 18 what our Boy Scouts and Girl Guides Associations do for a small fraction of British Youth is worthy of respect. We must agree that the injection of political ideas is an undesirable extra. Yet, physically and morally, German children are the better for the new training. That is the universal opinion.
The compulsory six months' labour service for young men is not quite in our line. The young women of Germany are now to have a similar service, and that would suit us even less. Moreover the cost is tremendous. It is equivalent to another million on the dole. Yet there are the good results, obvious to anyone not blinded by prejudice. The young men start life on a higher plane of bodily fitness and class distinctions are temporarily forgotten. The sense of social duty, self-sacrifice and what I can only call " pietas " that now prevails among the younger Germans is beyond anything we now haw. in Britain.
But this is not a final ;iidgement ; indeed it is all very difficult. The Labour Service and the two years of military duty make terrible inroads into German labour supply. And workers are badly wanted, both skilled and unskilled. What is per- haps worse for the country is that the Nazis have so discour- aged academic education in the high schools and universities, that they are already crying out for trained engineers and chemists. A newspaper was allowed to complain that a short- aze of to,000 of these key men existed already ; what was to become of Goring's Four Years Plan ? Moreover, there is a serious lack of qualified teachers. So, after all, the Totali- tarian State cannot have it bo, ways. Conflicting policies and muddle are, I believe, just as prevalent in Germany today as ever they were in our democratic England.
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