THROUGH GERMAN EYES
Beware of the English l Compiled by W. G. Knop. (Hamish Hamilton. 8s. 6d.) AMERICAN visitors to England are often puzzled by the fact that, although Englishmen differ in their views as to the likelihood of a war, nobody in this country ever envisages the possibility of a defeat. This curious book provides one explanation of an attitude which is wrongly taken for blind confidence. It is an anthology of the verbal and pictorial abuse which has been aimed against England in the German Press
during the ten months since the Munich agreement.
Any future war must be a war of morale, and the importance of this factor must increase with the increasing ruthlessness of the weapons to be employed. The present type of German propaganda is designed to keep alive the peace-time morale of the German people. If it is only possible to do this by means of increasing doses of powerful stimulants, there can be no reserves of hatred or credulity on which to fall back in time of war. Our own war-time propaganda is not likely to be mild or scrupulous ; but it will come, so to speak, upon an empty stomach. For years we have complained of the unintoxicating character of the B.B.C. news : but our unfortunate neighbours, at the other extreme, are put to bed night after night, their heads reeling with the fumes of artificial hatred.
No doubt the German Ministry of Propaganda knows how to satisfy the needs of the home consumer. The elephantine sarcasms, the stupendously verbose historical arguments, are probably adapted to the German taste. But one would expect of a people so resourceful that they would be able to adapt their methods for the purpose of spreading propaganda in England itself. This departure was announced in March last in characteristically sneering tones :
" From now on Mr. Smith has the chance (of which he will amply avail himself) to tune in to Hamburg or Cologne and find his desire for news satisfied in English. Mr. Smith will then learn to judge as between news which the English stations give him and news offered him by Germany. We do not fear the results of the comparison. Truth is the best propaganda. That is what Mr. Vansittart, who is behind the English flood of lies, will not and cannot understand. We shall expose the artful tricks of the English Government and mercilessly show up an English policy which is composed of ignorance and arrogance."
One might have expected so difficult a task to be approached with some subtlety, some attempt at disguise or insinuation. Instead we have been provided for our own consumption with a dreary concoction of elaborate sneers at all our institutions, from the Navy down to the Lambeth Walk. The German bulletins are so inept that the London newspapers often publish them as curiosities. The English bulletins may be a little colourless in their extreme reticence ; they are not so ineffectual but that it has been made an offence punishable with five years' imprisonment to spread their contents about.
Such ineptitude is all the more surprising in that English history and the English character afford every possible handle to the hostile critic. There are times when every Englishman must hate his country ; but not when Dr. Goebbels is persuad- ing him to do so. The performances of the I.R.A. in recent months provided Goebbels with a fine opportunity of showing that our working classes consisted of brutal and unruly black- guards, who think nothing of political murder ; instead of this, he has taken the side of the bomb-throwers, emphasised their Irish origin, and expatiated on British tyranny towards a country we have long since ceased to rule. Before the I.R.A. appeared, there were the stunts of a few unemployed who paraded with a coffin demanding " winter relief " at a time when half the employers in England could get no labourers. Once again Goebbels missed his cue. Instead of making out that England was infested with degenerate shirkers, he drew a fearful picture of the starvation and misery prevailing in the very country which his own papers always describe as being too bloated with money and doles to bother about fighting.
The Boer War and the suppression of the Indian Mutiny provide much of the ammunition for this campaign. In the hands of French journalists, these episodes can make most of us feel uncomfortable ; but the polysyllabic ranting of the German writers is so exaggerated as to produce no sort of conviction. In regard to Palestine, Dr. Goebbels had the opportunity to attack a policy which even our own soldiers loathe ; but he serves up such a horrible concoction of atrocities and anti-Semitism as would turn the stomach of an Arab himself.
No doubt Dr. Goebbels knows his own people best. It may be that his campaign is bearing fruit, and some of his dreadful tales are being believed. It matters not. None of this vilification could either create or sustain a war. There are some who will feel with regret that all this ill-feeling, whether it be genuine or artificial, could have been avoided. If only Great Britain had played ball with Herr Hitler, if only she had accepted the role of accessory for which she was cast in Mein Kampf, all would have been harmony and pro- gress. Britain's reaction has been Herr Hitler's one and only miscalculation ; and all this sound and fury is the disappoint- ment of a would-be friend and ally.
Not many of the readers of these extracts will feel that the friendship of such people is to be preferred to their hatred. Politics apart, our own and future generations cannot thrive in a Europe where the wells of truth are poisoned, and the air is polluted with the stink of injustice. The banker cannot compete with the forger, nor the diplomat with the bully. We must either lower our own standards of thought and conduct to the levels which this book reveals ; or we must resolve to obtain our own spiritual lebensraum.
CHRISTOPHER HOBHOUSE.
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