MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THE Air Ministry, with their accustomed ingenuity, organised last week an educational course for Members of both Houses of Parliament. Having obtained the loan of one of the Committee Rooms, they installed therein an exhibition of photographs taken over the bombed areas in Germany. It was unlike any photographic exhibition that I have ever seen. The room had been darkened, and around it glowed great panes of glass, illuminated from behind, and bearing on their surfaces fantastic shapes in superimposed patterns of red and blue. These coloured windows shone out in the surrounding darkness, giving to the occasion a mystery, a sense of imminence, which recalled the camera obscura, the peep-shows, the aquariums, the planetariums of former days. In a box upon the centre table were spectacles and lorgnettes fitted with one lens of red glass and another lens of blue. Several shy and heroic officers of the R.A.F. hung about in the half-darkness instructing legislators in the use of the apparatus and in the information which the photo- graphs disclosed. And it became a fact that, as one adjusted the lorgnette, waited a moment for the focus to impose itself, and gazed at the great sheets of glass, suddenly the pattern lost its red
and blue colour and there below one, as if seen from an aeroplane, were the telegraph poles, the newspaper kiosks and the tram- lines of a German town. The trees in the avenues cast their shadows upon door-steps ; a vast crane in the docks at Wilhelms- haven rose up at one from the quay-side ; one looked down into the depths of an exploded oil-storage tank as if looking into the recesses of a saucepan. The word " stereoscopic " assumed a different meaning: one felt that one could tell the difference between a high building and a low building by passing one's fingers across that serrated surface. The spires of the churches felt as if they pricked.
I had examined that very morning a photograph which had been published in the newspapers showing the effect of our bombardment of Dusseldorf. It would seem that ordinary newsprint is not able to convey the sharp outline essential to any clear interpretation of aerial photography. I had, it is true, observed from the newspaper photograph that considerable damage had been caused. Yet what I had noticed was only the actual destruction occasioned by high explosive ; the photograph had not disclosed the damage done by fire. Yet as my stereoscopic vision fell upon the same scene as enlarged and presented by the Air Ministry it was evident that in street after street every house had been burnt to the ground. The outside walls remained standing, but the roof had collapsed and one could see down into the house to the mass of debris accumu- lated upon the ground. floor. The streets and avenues had become mere rows of little empty boxes, as hollow as the orifices of a mouth- organ. Here was a factory with nothing left but the cement flooring.; here another factory with the main shops twisted and guttered out of shape ; here a dock with steamers lying on their ungainly sides ; here a railway station which had slid almost as a whole into the Bahnhofplatz, and there great sheets of water where towns had stood before. Looking at these amazing photographs one was not surprised that Dr. Goebbels should have abandoned all hope of minimising this dreadful havoc and should have burst into the high ululation of Stalingrad. " It is worse than Warsaw," exclaimed one German broadcaster in an effective but most unguarded phrase. It was worse than anything that could be conceived. We gazed at the mild aviators who conducted us: "Did you do this? Or you? Or you? "
I trust that this startling exhibition will in some form be opened to the public. It will, I think, convince them of three things. First, that the direct damage to munitions works and other military objectives is so devastating as to justify the important sacrifices it entails. Secondly, that the damage to civilian property is caused more by fire than by explosives, and that it is less terrible to drive munition-workers from their homes than to kill them in their cellars. And thirdly, as I wrote a few weeks ago, that the lesson which is thereby being imposed upon the German people is more salutary and more durable than any educational processes which we could devise. I do not think that any man who sees those photographs, who listens to the fear and fury of the German wireless, can doubt that this Battle of the Ruhr is, in fact, a second front, and that the dislocation it has caused, and will still cause, must hamper, and perhaps cripple, the hopes of any major offensive in the East. Nor do I believe that any German who hereafter may visit the Ruhr area will easily forgive the Nazi leaders either for having plunged them so wantonly into war or for having so tragically misconceived the planning and strategy of aerial warfare. Even the simplest German must know today that some gross miscalculation was made. And when they recall the boast of Hermann Goering that a single bomb on Germany would be viewed by him as a major defeat, they must clench their teeth in rage. The men of Bomber Command have to face strain and peril greater than anything endured before ; they have at least the satisfaction of knowing, as those of the Sottune never knew, that their courage achieves results which may well prove decisive.
One of the glass panes at the exhibition covered an area of Berlin. There was the Prager Platz and there the Motzstrasse running eastward towards the Nollendorfplatz. If I followed a street to the north I should reach the Gedichtniskirche and see the Café des Westens where Rupert Brooke wrote his famous verses, or the Romansiches Café which in my time was the centre of Berlin's Bohemian life. Gazing down upon those blocks of building's, I recalled how in each flat, owing to Schinkel's misguided notions of town-planning, there would be a Berliner Zimmer, opening upon the courtyard—a feature as invariable in all Berlin flats as is in London the double drawing-room. Heavy and dark were those Berlin dining-rooms, with the Herrenzimmer and the salon opening at one end and the bedrooms and offices at the other. How often in those grim dining-rooms had I discussed with Germans the origins of the First German War, the mistakes which they and we had made. How often had they said to me that their greatest mistake was not to seize the Channel ports in 1914 ; that our greatest mistake was not to press home the first attack upon the Dardanelles. How often had they said to me, "Did you ever realise in London how devastating was the effect on us of your blockade? " How often had I said to them, " Did you realise in Berlin that we never expected to achieve victory before July, 1919? " How often had they assured me that their second greatest error was their over- estimate of the effect of the U-boat campaign ; how often had they described the dismay which fell upon them when they learnt that large American armies had in fact arrived in France. More terrible than any of these miscalculations are the fantastic errors with which Herr Hitler has now faced them. In many a Berliner Zimmer today there must be mutterings of despair.
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One conversation remains particularly in my mind. In the autumn of 1929 I remarked to a German statesman that I had heard from Munich that Adolf Hitler was gaining ground. He snorted in derision. "That," he said, "is the sort of mistake that foreigners make. Hitler can never achieve a position in this country for three reasons: First, he speaks with a Bohemian accent, which makes him funny ; secondly, he acted as a police spy upon his comrades, which puts the, army against him ; and thirdly, he showed cowardice at the time of the Ludendorff putsch, which exposes him to universal contempt. No, I can assure you of this ; Hitler is impossible as an influence in German life. If you knew Germany better, you would see that any such idea is fantastic."
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