Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 1933. TROTSKY VERSUS HITLER

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 22, 26 July 1933, Page 8

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 1933. TROTSKY VERSUS HITLER

To ask Trotsky to criticise Hitler may seem rather like setting a thief to catch a thief, but this is what, with characteristic enterprise and with very happy. results, the '"Manchester Guardian" has done. Like Hitler himself, Trotsky is a man of words as well as a man of action, and it would have been easy for him to wax eloquent at the expense of a revolutionary of a type as violent as his own but representing at once the opposite extreme in politics, and a country with which the leadership of Hitler may at any [time provoke a clash. Being a Jew as well as a Russian, Trotsky might seem to have still further claims upon the hatred and contempt of the German dictator and to be likely to reciprocate these fcrlings with interest. But it is a criticism and not a philippic that the great Bolshevik has written. The two-column article j which he has contributed to the "Manchester Guardian" of June 21, under the title "Hitler and Disarmament," contains a shrewd and dispassionate survey of' the effects of the Nazi revolution upon international politics. There is no violence in it, and very little eloquence. It presents a closelyreasoned argument, written in racy and idiomatic English, adorned here and there by pleasant touches of wit, and revealing a broad outlook and an easy familiarity with the trend of opinion in Britain. M. Trotsky's opening paragraph should serve as a wholesome warning not less to the diehards than to the pacifists of Britain.

It is a most dangerous thing, he says, to fail to appraise- an.enemy accurately simply" because his system extends beyond the bounds of routine.. To dispose of the Nazi problem by saying that Hitler is a demagogue, hysterical, a comedian, is to shut one's eyes to the danger instead of facing it. Hysteria alono could not have achieved tho' seizure, of power. , .

M. Trotsky's contention is that it is absurd to suppose either that the hysterical effervescence of Nazi violence means that it is only a passing phase, or that it has been purged or checked by that conciliatory reply in the Reichstag on May 17 to President Roosevelt's appeal. He describes that speech as "staggering in its unexpected pacifism," and as having by that alone succeeded in its immediate aim. A campaigner so well versed as M. Trotsky in the strategy both of peace and of war speaks with authority when he says that "it is always advantageous to take an opponent by surprise." ,He considers that Herr Hitler reaped that advantage in the gratitude of Sir John Simon for a speech which revealed "the moderate tone of a statesman" and in the still more surprising innocence which led the "Morning Post" to discover that it breathed the "soft accent of the South."

" The entire Press declared, says M. Trotsky, that the atmosphere had suddenly become less tense, and consequently that the chances of disarmament had manifestly improved. What a blunder! Anyone who expects to meet a madman brandishing an axe and encounters instead a man with a Browning hidden in his hip-pocket cannot fail to experience a feeling of relief. But that does not prevent the Browning from being more dangerous than the axe.

Dissenting both from those who take the Reichstag speech at'its face value, or at any rate for something substantial and from the sceptics who see in it "only an episodic manoeuvre," M. Trotsky refuses to believe that all the "fantasy and delirium" in the Nazi policy means that HenHitler is inaapable of weighing realities. On the contrary he regards this fantasy and delirium as "attuned to expediency and to his real political aims."

The guiding philosophical and historical ideas in Hitler's declaration are, he says, truly pitiful in their pretentious mediocrity. The idea of reatlapting the State frontiers of Europe to the frontiers of its races is one of those reactionary Utopias with which the National Socialist programme is stuffed full.

It is certainly an idea of which the Nazis, when they are strong enough to help themselves, are not likely to make a better success than the Peace Conference was able to make, but for the preserft, it seems, they have renounced "Germanisation."

The renunciation of Germanjsatioii, says M. Trotsky, signifies, in this connection, tho principle of the privileged position of the Germanic "race" as the seigniorial caste in the occupied territories. The Nazis are against assimilation, but not against annexation., The whole Hitler programme for the reconstruction of Europe is a medley of racial mysticism and national cannibalism.

This Nazi policy of "national cannibalism" is, however, not to be realised at once, and M. Trotsky does not question the sincerity of the postponement. What Germany wants is a revision of the treaties that will leave her stronger and France weaker, and that is what France does not want. M. Trolsky is, of course, right when he says that revision has no meaning for Germany but this, and that the pressing of her demand

will make another conflict between the old antagonists inevitable.

But not today, nor yet tomorrow, ho continues. It is precisely this "correction" with regard to timo that Hitler makes in his declaration, and, in this sense, it is not a mere "deception." In her present state Germany cannot make war; she is disarmed. This is no phrase, it is a fact. Bespectacled students and unemployed with a swastika brassard, are no substitute for tho Hohcnzollern army.

How long the Nazis may have to wait before Germany's great "Day" comes round again M. Trotsky does not attempt to estimate, but it is satisfactory to know that, in spite of the fears of France, he regards! the present disarmament of Germany as not, a phrase but a fact, and that Mr. Clifford Sharp, writing from Berlin to the "New Statesman," says that, though he finds the nation praclioally unanimous in regarding a Avar, for the recovery of all that it has lost as inevitable, nobody thinks that the period of waiting will be less than ten or fifteen years. I

With M. Trotsky's argument regarding Nazi Germany's relations with Italy, Britain, and. Russia we have left ourselves no space to deal. He is satisfied that Britain's help as well as Italy's will be needed to give Germany the necessary freedom of movement, and the Nazis themselves appear to share that view. The consternation which induced them to send Dr. Rosenberg on his ill-advised mission to London supplied strong evidence on the point, and it is confirmed by the consternation which is reported fr,om Berlin today over the British protest against the illegality of Germany's proposed aerial police force. On this matter at any rate Sir John Simon and M. Trotsky can see eye to eve. '