THE GERMAN MIND

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 88, 13 April 1935, Page 18

THE GERMAN MIND

A SUBJECT FOR STUDY

HISTORIAN'S VIEWPOINT

A LOST OPPORTUNITY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, March 16.

A new and rather abstruse subject for study at the present time is the psychology of the German nation. Young British students are given the opportunity •in Germany of taking courses bearing on the. new methods of the State. .More mature people pay visits and get in touch with the Nazi Headers. This investigation is all to the good. ■■'..'.'.. . ■.'"-■. Lord Lothian (Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, previously editor of "The Bound Table") was a.recent visitor to Germany, where he interviewed Herr Hitler. In a letter to "The Time?" he gives an explanation for Germany's reaction against certain phrases about German ' re-armament contained in the Defence White Paper. "All Germany," he writes, "and not only Nazi Germany regards her armed neighbours, rather than Germany, as having defaulted on the disarmament provisions of the Covenant and the promises which accompanied the Treaty of Versailles. Moreover in December, 1932, Germany was promised equality in a regime of security. On| June 8, 1933, the British disarmament] plan had been accepted by all the. Powers, including Germany, as 'the' basis of a future convention.' "Germany withdrew from the Disarmament Conference and the League in October because in the intervening ,months the other Powers, to quote Baron yon Neurath, had agreed among themselves 'to substitute a new plan for the Mac Donald Plan' to the disadvantage of Germany, and she became convinced that 'equality' was going to be denied. In April, 1934, Germany showed her good will by formally declaring her willingness to accept the revised British proposals of January, 1934, including an arrangement that Germany should only have an air force —without bombers—not exceeding 30 per.cent, of: the combined air forces of her^neighbours, or 50, per cent, of the military aircraft possessed by France> whichever figure was.\the less. This proposal was flatly negatived by the Barthou 'No' of April 17. "Convinced by that •time that equality' was out of reach through the disarmament of her neighbours, Germany began to take the equality she had been promised by re-arming in earnest. She was all the more resolved to .do this because: through the experience of 15 years she had realised that equality of sfetus would only make her of full account inside-the League or outside it if it was accompanied by equality of power. The statement in the White Paper, therefore, that German rearmament may 'produce a situation where peace will be in peril,', and generally making Germany the scapegoat, touches Herr Hitler and. Germany on their most sensitive complex."

ATTpUDE OF THE VANQUISHED. To this letter Dr. Edwyn Bevan (Fellow of New College, Oxford, lecturer in the London University on Heir lenic History and Literature) replies:

"It is important," he says, "to see that there is a reason why Germany's re-arming arouses particular suspicion —a 'reason the Germans themselyes may appreciate. It is that the existing arrangement of Europe is one established by the will of the Allies and not by the will of Germany. If France arms, everybody knows that her purpose is to protect the existing state of things—naturally, because it is a state of things which France herself took a principal part in framing; if Germany arms, everybody suspects that'her purpose is.to break the peace —naturally, because the existing state of things is one which was imposed upon Germany against her will., Only very naive pacifism can imagine that, after such a struggle, you can brush off the dust of it, saying; 'Now let us disarm all round,'-and expect that the arrangements forced upon the vanquished will go on of themselves when pressure is withdrawn.

"We ought to have foreseen this difficulty in 1919. Sagacious statesmanship on the part of the victors would have made it their principal aim then so to deal with the Power momentarily prostrate that, later On, when that Power recovered strength—as Germany was certain to do some day—it might feel that the arrangement come to was one to which it had agreed ex animo, not one simply imposed upon it by force^ It would not have £een easy, because, if Europe was,to be rearranged on the principle that the different regions should be, as far as possible, under the Governments which their populations desired—the principle whose application the Germans have just applauded in the case of the Saar—that would require renunciations. on the part of Germany such: as would hot be required of Great; Britain, or France, or Italy. None of these three. Powers had in 1919 any. Europeah population' unwillingly attached to it— unless the Southern Irish would have desired to be altogether detached from the British Commonwealth, which is improbable—but the Germans would have to relinquish dominion '-over. many Alsatians and Danes and Poles. Yet such was the temper of the Germans at-that moment, so' strong -was the revulsion of feeling againstv.'fbe' regime which had brought them to ■' disaster, that there was a good chance of their acquiescing even in such renunciations if the victors of the mo-' ment had shown a generous and understanding >pirit and made the cirii cumstances of the peace as.little'humiliating as possible to Germany. To few statesmen in history has such an opportunity 'come as came to Mt. Lloyd George in 1919. • ..... HITLEE CONTENT WITH ... ...■•: . ;./.'' FRONTIERS. "Till the other day," Dr. Bevan continues, "the-situation seemed hopeless. It was not possible for the Allies to conciliate Germany by agreeing to a revision of the map as drawn ■',in 1919, for the territorial arrangements of the qeace of Versailles corresponded, on the whole, with justice; but even' the just provisions, of the peace had be'en rendered odious to the Germans by their accompaniments. Now, however, have come the solemn declarations of Herr Hitler that, Germany agrees for good to the existing frontiers on the West and the still more surprising rapprochement.between Germans and Poles. I believe that most people competent to form'an opinion do not .doubt'-.that. Herr /Hitler is quite sin.cere/ " -;H:'; .'■■■'.: ':' ..'■;' ■■•■

■ "Whether any declarations or promises of Herr Hitler made today will ■bind the. Germany of five, or ten, or twenty years hence-may, of course, be questioned.;- But if there is a chance that a generous and understanding spirit shown at this new juncture by England towards Germany may retrieve the opportunity lost in 1919, to let.it slip may spell incalculable disaster for Europe." -.

strength of the • competing countries. There will be much failing arid gnashing of teeth, before professionals are admitted to the Davis Cup and the Olympic Games, but unless amateurism makes some such terms with the enemy, who is, ip fact, ho enemy, it will be destroyed by -the falsity of its own position.