THE ONLY GERMANY
SIR,—Some of the many letters which you published in reply to my original letter are so full of misleading half-truths that I must beg for your further hospitality in an effort to clarify the issue at stake. None of your correspondents has refuted any of my points as to the underlying belief of the Germans in their intrinsic superiority and in their civilising " mission " in the world.
Mr. Rene Elvin points out that the saying "Am deutschen Wesen wird die Welt genesen" is part of a poem by Emmanuel Geibel. Surely this is irrelevant. What matters is that that particular sentence has been accepted universally by' the Germans (and not merely by the " simpletons ") and is used by them as a proverb. It matters little whether Hoffman von Fallersleben or anyone else was the author of Germany's National Anthem. But it concerns all of us that the poem which the German nation adopted enthusiastically as her anthem and which has become her spiritual banner begins with the words "Deutschland fiber Riles."
Mr. Pick asks me why I hate Germany. My answer is that I did not use one single word which would entitle him to make such an erroneous deduction. My possible national likes or dislikes have nothing whatsoever to do with this correspondence. I limited myself to giving historical and psychological facts not one of which Mr. Pick was able to prove wrong. He asks me whether I know my Goethe and Lessing. Indeed I do. But I am afraid Mr. Pick will find that only very few Germans of the post-1919 generation know those poets, one of whom has even been banned in his own country. Anyhow, Goethe on the bookshelf is of little value if Goethe as a spiritual guide plays no longer any part in the moral and intellectual life of his country. To speak of modern Germany in terms of Goethe and Lessing suggests the sort of ignorance and sentimentality which in the last few years have proved not without danger in our approach to the German problem. The two thinkers whom the Germans have chosen as their ideological teachers are exactly those who symbolise the tendencies which I described as typical of the " Only Germany ": Fichte and Nietzsche.
None of your correspondents seems to have noticed that the " other," the gentler and democratic, Germany has flourished only when the country was weak and had no means
to assert Pangerman views. As soon as Germany felt strong her " gentler " ideals were forgotten. The case of Stresemann, whom one of your correspondents mentions, illustrates this point admirably. Only for a very brief time would Germany
accept Stresemann's democratic principles, and none of his great gifts prevented him from being stabbed in the back by the majority of his own countrymen. Is it necessary to recall the tragic fate of a Rathenau and an Erzberger to remember that even at a time when democracy was fashionable in Ger- many the real democrat stood little chance to assert himself against those who believed exclusively in the German supremacy?
May I add in conclusion that no one in his senses has
ever advocated that certain dangerous tendencies in the world could only be rendered harmless by the extermination of a whole people? There is more than one solution, and some of them have already been mentioned in The Spectator. I feel, however, that it may be premature to speak of them at a moment when war has hardly begun.—Yours faithfully, Rost LANDAU.
The Manor, Stoughton, Chichester, Sussex.
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