MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD N !COLSON
LORD VANSITTART, in this week's Sunday Times, questioned with his accustomed vigour the use made in the Atlantic Charter of the phrase " Hitlerite Germany." I agree that the too frequent repetition of that partial and unlovely designation may lead to misunderstanding. The word " Nazi," with its firm first syllable and its sneaking second, provides a deft tone-signal for the Prime Minister's combative contempt , yet in reality it is as illogical to refer to the " Nazi air-force " as to designate the R.A.F. as Conservative, Liberal or Labour. I agree with Lord Vansittart that if we slip into the verbal (and therefore mental) habit of regarding the Parleigenossen of the National Socialist Party as our only enemies we may trick the public into assuming that a change of leadership in Germany might also entail a change of heart. It is clear from the con- troversy which has raged around Black Record, as indeed from the correspondence in this journal on the subject of the German soul, that the public as a whole are still uncertain whether we are fighting Adolf Hitler, or the Nazi Party, or Prussian militarism, or the New Order, or the German people as a whole. It may seem strange to foreign observers that the British people should embark upon the third year of the Second German War without having achieved any common or consistent opinion upon the nature of their enemy. We have a congenital tendency to prefer pleasant illusions to unpleasant facts, and it is assuredly more comfortable to wish to believe that we are fighting a small group of party gangsters than to admit that our opponents are a brave and competent nation of eighty millions. Yet I hold (at least to my own satisfaction) that if we resolutely discard all comfortable illusions, and strive to penetrate to the centre of uncomfortable fact, we shall not find the centre as unmanage- able as so many suppose.
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