PEOPLE AND THINGS
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THERE occurs in Man Kampf a passage which every British statesman should learn by heart It has often been quoted, but it deserves to be quoted again. It runs as follows:
"A wise victor will, if posssible, always impose his claim on the defeated people stage by stage. Dealing with a people that has grown defeatist—and this is every people who have voluntarily submitted to force—he can then rely on this fact that in not one of those further acts of oppression will it seem sufficient reason to take up arms again."
This passage is illustrative, not merely of Herr Hitler's bad grammar, but of his whole conception of internal and ex- ternal policy. It is this turning of the screw which he is at the moment applying to the unfortunate citizens of the Austrian, Bohemian and Moravian protectorates. It is this system which since his advent to power he has followed in his dealings with Great Britain. Hitherto it had proved a successful system.
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