GERMAN PHILOSOPHY

Evening Star, Issue 21638, 6 February 1934, Page 1

GERMAN PHILOSOPHY

STATED BY SPENGLER Germany is sincere in her desire for a period of peace. But the Nazi Heich contemplates witli untroubled mien the prospect of another world war; for this war she will prepare, for this war she will ba ready (says a writer in the ‘ Daily Express ’). There is no doubt of this in any Nazi inin/i. In this connection there is a book all Germany is reading. The title is ' Years of Decision,’ by Oswald Spengler,; an able philosophic historian and a writer of tremendous power, whose earlier work, ‘ The Decline of the West,’ made him famous. • This new book is now to be seen on every, bookstall and in every book shop in Germany. It is the only piece of liter-tura critical of Nazi-ism which the Nazis have yet permitted to appear. The Nazis love it, and Hitler himself is said to have, learned many passages by heart. It would not be wasted effort if all foreign secretaries were to commit some extracts to memory. It is a call to action, a call to arms, a call to conquest. It is the credo of aggressive militant nationalism embodied in' the Nazi State. Spengler caustically condemns what ha calls the “ hurrah ” mood of the Nazis, The national revolution of 1933, he says, was Prussian through .and through. It aroused the dreamers and prepared tha way. But it was a “ too easy” triumph, and it was only a beginning. “ Woe ba to those who confuse mobilisation with victory.” The “ great drama of world politics is not at an end. Big moves are being made, Every vital nation is faced with the alternative of greatness or destruction. The whole Western world is to be involved in the coming struggle.” Lot Germany, he says, be sparing of her enthusiasm, and reserve it for the day when she has emerged in triumph from that conflict. This is no time, he goes on, for sentimentalists. Germany, young and valiant and strong, can, if she will, survive many nations that are too old and stiff to defend themselves. The pacifist resolution passed by tha undergraduates of England’s greatest university is, says Spengler, one of many plain indications that England is in process of decay and disintegration. Her younger generation, he says, has gone soft. Tha English are occupying themselves foolishly with Bolshevik problems. “ They are making a sport of eroticism and of sport a profession.” America, too, has failed to withstand bar own crisis. She has no stamina and has falsified her destiny. PRUSSIANS LEFT. Only the “ warrior Prussian spirit,” ha' declares, will prevail in the struggle that looms ahead. It is a struggle in which dishonest optimism will have no part—tha dishonesty which announces that prosperity is on the way as soon as a few stocks rise a point or two or a hundred men are reemployed, and that an international understanding has been reached as soon ae the League of Nations—” that system of summer holiday-makers basking on tha shore of Lake Geneva ” pass a resolution. We are living, Spengler continues, in vigorous times. The World War was only tha first rumblings of the storm which, heavy with fate, it to break over this century. The world is being remodelled. Who realises that it is a piece of luck to ba living in this stirring moment? There are peoples who are small and unable to endure tragedy. The world is ruled by fools and cowards. But the cowardly security of the lasi century is at an end. No more white Bolshevism. No more idle happiness and empty Utopias. Man is a beast of prey. The race is to the swift and the battle to the strong. Let German women breed warrior men and take pleasure in breeding them. It is of much greater consequence thafi the nation should be racially strong than that it should be racially pure. We are perhaps on the very eve of the second world war. Let Germany therefore prepare and be ready. I have selected and summarised these characteristic extracts from the most strik. ing and popular piece of literature published under the present regime, because they unmistakably reflect and express tha spirit of Nazi Germany. If you desire to know what millions of Germans are saying and thinking to-day you cannot ignore the words of Oswald Spongier.