• The German Problem
Need Germany Survive ? By Julius Braunthal. With an Introduotion by Harold J. Laski. (Gollancz. 75. 6d.) HERR BRAUNTHAL has written two books, one candid, intelligent, valuable, the other sophistical, not very intelligent and at best, harmless. It is to be feared that the second book will attract most attention, that the common reader will be bored, and the less com- mon reader irritated into putting down the bad book before he gets to the shorter good book unfortunately bound up with the longer bad one.
The thesis of the bad book, as far as one can be disentangled from very crowded and not very clear chapters, is that the denouncers of Germany and Germans either misrepresent the facts or ignore that they apply more generally. It's a case of " you're a liar " or " you're another." So many things have been said about Germany and the Germans that Herr Braunthal makes some good points. But swopping of proof texts, " Fichte is no worse than Lord Elton." " What did Stead say in 1891? " is a waste of time and paper if done in this way. There is a case for a discussion of the character of German political philosophy (if it has one character). There is a case for the kind of defence made by Victor Basch or, more recently,
at a more profound level, by Professor Knox. But it is impossible to separate Hegel or Fichte, or Marx for that matter, from the whole German university tradition, and especially from the whole. Ge:man philosophical tradition. Almost every word they use is only fully intelligible in a context that takes a deal of time, patience, and unborability to master. Like Melbourne (or was it Palmerston?) the English reader may mutter something about " a land of damned professors "—and, innocently enough, say something important. For one great difference between England and Germany is that the English don't take their professors or publicists as seriously as do the Germans. They have something better to do, for their political thinkers really unite theory and practice in a way that has been forbidden in effect to the German thinkers. Burke and Bagehot, Beveridge and Keynes, these are not mere Socialists, or Liberals, or politicians "of the chair." There is no use insisting on rubbing the noses of the English people in academic discussions of race, polity, international' relations. All they need know is that Germany is a country where these things are taken seriously—which is an important fact about Germany.
The real crux of Herr Braunthal's argument comes when we turn from ambiguous oracles about the political nature of things to the political nature of things. Here Herr Braunthal makes some good points, but he makes too many points, some feeble and some bad. He exaggerates the role of the old Prussian landed aristo- cracy who did not monopolise power nearly as much as is sug- gested. He simplifies in a misleading way the implications of the Daily Telegraph interview. But he does more. His picture of the position of the German Social-Democratic party in the Second International in 1914 is outrageously couleur de rose. Professor Laski, in his introduction, refers to Charles Andler's polemics ; Herr Braunthal should have developed the theme. And he is more than once, with what degree of innocence I cannot say, grossly unjust. There is a good deal to be said for and against Fabianism and the Webbs (some of it was later said by the Webbs), but the verbal juggling with words like " royal- prerogative " is not one of the good ways of showing up the Fabians.
When Herr Braunthal turns from mere polemics to current politi- cal discussion, he becomes a new and much more effective writer. His defence of the German Social-Democrats in 1932 ; his effective deflating of some " braver than thou " fighters of Fascism from London, his views on the future of Germany, not-all convincing but all worth pondering, make it appear even more of a pity that he should have wasted so much time in proving that a German or Austrian Socialist has a very different picture of the nineteenth century from that a British Socialist has. That difference is very important. So are, too, other points made by Herr Braunthal:' (a) Germans are very patriotic like Englishmen; (b) in many other ways they are not like Englishmen. I am not sure that he meant to make
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