The Making of Yesterday: The Diary of Raoul De Roussy De Sales
FEBRUARY 2, 1942. — I haven’t written anything in this diary for the last month or more because of various personal reasons: health mainly, and then the necessity for finishing my book. But there are other reasons for my neglect. First, the feeling that always comes over anyone who tries to write a diary: that nothing is more fruitless, more superfluous. Secondly, laziness and boredom.
I am convinced that Hitler has got the best of me, or is about to, by means of a weapon I had not foreseen: sheer boredom. This war and everything connected with it bores me. Ilitler bores me. The state of mind that predominates all over the world bores me. Books, newspapers, and conversations that can speak of nothing but the war bore me — and make everything else tiresome. Hitler has conquered through dissension, terror, and confusion, counting on the inertia, the ignorance, and the stupidity of mankind. But he has another weapon: the yawn. The day will come when the whole world will yawn, and on that day the war will be lost.
Public morale here is not very good on tlie whole. Tremendous efforts have been made to exploit the Pearl Harbor attack (“Remember Pearl Harbor,” etc.), but the public seems to have sunk back into apathy. There is a kind of excitement or enthusiasm over the idea of having to undergo various privations (automobiles, rubber, frigidaires, sugar), but these privations haven’t materialized as yet. People are entertained and exhilarated by the prospect, but eating dry bread is not so entertaining as the idea of eating it.
In theory, people are aware of the effort that must be made, but no one seems able to realize this in figures. My doctor asked me, “How long will the war last?” I answered him, “Perhaps ten, perhaps five years.” He was startled, did not believe me, found the idea frightening.
March 15. Tucson, Arizona. — Here for a T.B. cure. In this isolated region, the echoes of war are stifled. The local papers are bad, the radio worse. In spite of this, the feeling that the war is going badly manages to penetrate, but it doesn’t mean much. It’s all too far away.
Yesterday Washington admitted that a naval disaster was suffered the other day north of Java. Thirteen Allied ships were sunk, of which several were cruisers. Japanese losses were not comparable. That battle didn’t prevent the Japs from taking Java. Apparently, they’re now preparing to isolate Australia. I don’t see how they can be stopped.
March 20. — I have never listened to the radio so much. In this part of the country, the time given to the war news and to commentators is kept to a bare minimum. The programs consist mostly of the big commercial programs from New York and Hollywood, the comics, and plays. The inanity of it all is overpowering. The monotony and stupidity are incredible. Obviously it has an attraction, if I can judge by my nurse, an average young girl who is clearly very much interested in it. At the top of all her interests are the Hollywood stars, the radio stars. Everything else, the war for instance, forms a rather vague background.
April6. — Herbert Agar arrived here yesterday. He told me, “When America herself understands why she’s fighting the war, it will be time enough to tell others.”
As he’d just finished a lecture tour, 1 asked him what he thought of the national morale. “People are bored with the war,” he said. “ They don’t understand what it’s about, consider it an unfortunate accident.” 1 n Washington, said Herbert, the government’s idea is to let the public find out for itself the meaning of 1 he war and what it wishes to do. A dangerous procedure, I say. France died without having understood a thing about it.
I have read America’s Strategy in World Politics, by N. J. Spykman, a treatise on American geopolitics based on the German model.
April 8. —In Spykman’s book, t here is not one mention of France except in the past tense. The same conclusion can be drawn from most of the books or articles appearing today which talk of the world of the future. Whatever happens, France is considered finished, relegated to the level of Spain or even lower. My private opinion is the same. I don’t think that France, even if she rises again, will in my lifetime regain the position she once had. She is no longer one of the great powers. Without being too chauvinistic about it, I find it difficult to get used to this thought, especially for intellectual and cultural reasons.
Paris, for instance, can never be replaced. There is no other conceivable world capital, unless a world be envisioned that is completely indifferent to what Paris symbolized (which is possible: a return to a kind of barbarism). Meanwhile, it will soon be two years that Paris has been inaccessible, swallowed up in a German Europe, annihilated. That such a city can disappear like this is astounding. But such are the facts. And yet it didn’t make much of an impression. The world goes on its way deprived of Paris and France, unaware as yet of the strange and staggering void thus left.
April 18. — The news from France is still obscure. It seems that Petain remains Chief of State, but with a less important role, similar to that of President of the Republic. Laval has taken the ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Interior, Darlan that of National Defense.
The reaction here is what could be expected. Leahy has been recalled, but an attache will be left in Vichy, together with some consuls. The press is naturally making a violent attack on Laval and is beginning to gush about Petain. My own opinion has not altered: Laval and Petain are cause and effect. 1 prefer Laval, who has the advantage of never having concealed his point of view beneath the hypocrisy and slyness of Petain.
April 20. — F.D.R. has thought up a name for the war: “The War for Survival.” It isn’t brilliant. People can’t tear themselves away from the negative idea of defense.
In The Education of Henry Adams, 1 read the following, written in 1005: “Paris still felt a subtle flattery in the thought that the last great tragedy of gods and men would surely happen there, while no one could conceive of its happening at Bayreuth or would care if it did.”
Concerning Henry Adams and his education: To be disillusioned, bitter, or even skeptical does not suit the American temperament. Henry Adams succeeds in giving the impression of something monstrous in his desire to picture himself as a failure. His bitterness has no vigor, his skepticism no lightness. Intellectual rickets, as irritating as it is affected.
May 6. — Corregidor has fallen with its garrison of 7000 men. China is now encircled, cut off from outside supplies. Can she hold out? The impression in so-called informed circles is one of doubt. The way to India is equally open. Gandhi’s point of view still prevails. India will oppose the Japs with non-resistance and non-cooperation. That will do India a lot of good.
The Madagascar battle is going on. DiegoSuarez is still holding out, and London announces that the operation may last several days. Vichy speaks of heroic defense, and Petain congratulates the defenders. Is this going to be Syria all over again? Queer that in this war the French light convincingly only against themselves or against the British.
May 25. ■— De Gaulle’s mission is to defend the French Empire and restore it to France after the war, intact. The thought does not occur to the French that they, at least right now, arc hardly in a position to reclaim anything. Nor will they admit, undoubtedly not having thought about it, that the end of the war will probably mark the finish of empires, and that this is even one of its aims.
It’s amazing to think that so many Frenchmen and even Americans find it perfectly natural to talk about the British Empire as gone forever and at the same time to promise the French that theirs will be restored.
May 20. — The greatest disaster that could be imagined, outside of a sudden German victory, would be for the war to come to an end tomorrow, even with the defeat of Germany. People have never been so little prepared to make peace. Never have there been fewer ideas on the subject. Everything is in a state of flux, but the commotion is all underground and has not yet appeared on the surface. Even in England, which is two years ahead of this country, I doubt whether the people are capable of expressing their desires for a post-war world.
Over here, people are in the wishful-thinking stage. On the one hand there are those who dream about I don’t know what kind of political and moral Americanization of the planet, and on the other those who are beginning to campaign for a return to isolationism and a new Harding. Once again, America doesn’t realize that she must pay her way (I’m speaking of moral and political concessions as well as economic concessions). She can conceive only of isolationism or of the world’s adapting itself to her views. It’s the same conception as in 1918 with the added aggravation that at least in 1918 Wilson brought over the idea of the League of Nations, together with principles that held a certain world-wide attraction.
Even from the simple economic standpoint (and the Americans involuntarily still think as businessmen), peace at this time would lead to the most unimaginable disasters. It may be that, if the war lasts long enough, certain adaptations will be made and people will be better conditioned to accept the inevitable post-war hardships and discipline. But at present we are too close to the ideas of liberalism and laissez-faire and not yet sufficiently accustomed to certain new values (such as price control, a managed economy, necessary planning). Peace tomorrow would be a great misfortune.
June 2. — Welles’s speech the other day is obviously an important one. As the war goes on, its aims become clearer. They are still rather confused, but Welles’s speech is a forward step. It emphasized the fact that the peoples of the ent ire world are to be liberated (in the last war the application of Wilson’s principles was confined to Europe). This means that the problem of racial equality will be in the forefront. There will be no more exclusion of Asiatics and Negroes, at least in theory.
In addition, acknowledgment is made of the necessity for armed control over the aggressors for a fixed period, and consequently of the responsibility of their leaders and those who supported them. It is not clear just to wliat lengths this responsibility will be carried. A long period of reconstruction is foreseen in which the United States will take the initiative. This will give an opportunity to experiment in the field of economic equality. No more imperialism, said Welles — which means what? Will empires really be abolished, or limited, or modified? That remains to be seen.
June 3. — It’s interesting to see in the various German publications and in the press a certain amount of anxiety about the fate of Germany after the war. All the anti-Hitler Germans, as well as numerous Americans, are already becoming softhearted or alarmed about the future sufferings that may be inflicted on the Germans.
The question of responsibility and of punishment is bothering a number of people. The dilemma is as follows: everyone agrees that the Nazis must be condemned and punished (if possible), but since the Nazis are Germans, how can the chaff be separated from the wheat? The theory is that the Germans were the first victims of the Nazis, in the same category as the conquered peoples, and therefore that they should be liberated and treated gently.
The flaw in this theory is that, as soon as the war is over and the time has come to mete out justice, all the Nazis will disappear. The Allies will be confronted by the good German people, crucified, maltreated, betrayed, and so on.
June 5. — Molotoff has been in Washington for the last few days. It’s supposed to be a secret, but the fact that I know it proves it isn’t airtight. The papers, however, are not letting a peep out, not even by allusion. I’m told that the Russians and British have reached an agreement, that they have even signed a twenty-year accord. But here there is friction. The Russians are dead set on recovering the Baltic states and a part of Finland.
Public opinion in America will have a hard time swallowing this form of Russian imperialism. People are still sentimental, especially about Finland. Nevertheless, I think the Allies will have to yield to the Russian demands, for the Russians are strong right now and have already proved that their foreign policy is not dictated by sentiment. There’s always the risk that if they’re not satisfied they’ll make peace with Hitler.
June 12. — Molotoff’s visit, his trip to London, and the results of that visit have been made public. The British, with a realistic look toward the future, have lined up with the Russians, not only for the war but for afterward. They’re picking up a new ally on the Continent to replace France. As the price of this alliance, they have undoubtedly conceded to the Russians the Baltic states, Bessarabia, part of Finland, and probably a good slice of Poland. The clause about not seeking territorial aggrandizement is merely a piece of camouflage. It refers to the 1041 frontiers, not those of 1939. But the point is left in doubt because of British and, especially, American feelings. Washington cannot subscribe to the disappearance of small nations.
Thus, if the war should end tomorrow in a German defeat, the policing of Europe would be taken over by Great Britain and Russia. It’s the first time in history that Russia plays such a major part while France disappears from the scene.
An attempt is being made over here to persuade people that the Russians have given up their territorial claims (to the Baltic, for example) under American pressure. Raymond Gram Swing said this last night, and Arthur Krock writes it this morning. These uncertain speculations are going to lead to some disagreeable surprises on the day of reckoning.
There’s no getting away from the balance of powers. This one is unprecedented.
It’s worth noting that, in their arrangements with the Russians, the British are protecting themselves as far as possible against the possible defection of the United States. Their agreement concerns Europe, and theoretically the terms are applicable even without the United States.
June 16. — People are beginning to give thought to the question of the German people’s responsibility in this war and to what must be done with them after the war. Up till now they have been trying, more or less consciously, to avoid it. They have accepted the general theory, put forward by the British government at the start of the war, that the Allies were fighting the Nazis and not the German people, who were considered innocent and, indeed, the first victims of the tyrants. This theory is still more or less the official one.
Here the same thesis has been officially adopted. Henry Wallace and Sumner Welles have both expressed the theory that the innocent must not suffer on account of the guilty. Sumner Welles said that not only the responsible leaders must bo punished but also the responsible groups (which is rather an elastic definition). In spite of these variants, all the Allied governments appear to be in agreement on the principle that there must bo no reprisals against the German people as a whole.
Public opinion apparently agrees with this point of view, as shown by the Gallup Poll, which is approximately the same as that made in England. Today the Americans are thinking the same things that the British were thinking in September, 1939. Only 6 per cent believe the German people to be the enemy, and 79 per cent consider the Nazi government responsible. But the Brilish precedent is interesting, since in November, 1940, the responsibility w’as pretty nearly evenly distributed betweon the Germans and their leaders.
The general public and especially its leaders (church, educational) are certainly opposed to the idea of inflicting reprisals on the Germans after the war. This idea of vengeance is un-American, and it will be very difficult to convince the Americans that, entirely apart from vengeance, giving the Germans a taste of war’s hardships may be the only means of restraining them for a while.
The curious thing is that this softheartedness toward the Germans is not in evidence with regard to the Japanese. In an article on Japan, published in Harper s (June), Nathaniel Peffer writes the following : —
“Japan must be not only defeated but crushed.
. . . The Japanese for more than a generation have been making war as a kind of lark, an agreeable adventure. . , . For Japan the adventure closes with martial celebrations and emotional satisfaction, ... If Japanese militarism is to be checked, the Japanese m ust be brought to realize that war exacts a terrible price. This they can learn only when its ruins are left on their own soil as an ever present reminder of the cost of recklessness. It is not sufficient therefore to break the Japanese armies wherever they have invaded; it is necessary to carry the war to Japan, to destroy its principal cities and its whole industrial mechanism.”
I doubt that anyone will write accusing Peffer of inhumanity and blind passion. There are no Japanese-Americans in a position to raise their voices in favor of their compatriots. But all Peffer says applies to Germany, too, and yet people don’t tolerate the idea of razing German cities or of indiscriminately punishing the German population to make them lose their taste for war and the Prussian spirit (samurai).
Those who suggest some sort of retribution want to leave it in the hands of the Czechs, ihe Poles, the Greeks, the French — while the Americans and even the British step gracefully aside. The theory is that only the actually conquered peoples will wish to take vengeance on their oppressors, thus relieving the noble Anglo-Saxons of the dirty work considered necessary.
This suggestion is not very pleasant. It’s a fine example of puritanism and hypocrisy. But it’s even worse than that, for it’s an escape. The question is not whether there is to be vengeance on the Germans or on which Germans, but how to prevent the Germans from starting a new war in another twenty years or less. This is a practical problem for the psychologist, the politician, and the historian. Neither emotional nor even moral considerations must be allowed to interfere.
If the conclusion should be reached that every German must be massacred and that this is practical, then it must certainly be done. If, on the other hand, it should be decided that the only means of satisfying them is a total amnesty, then everything must be forgotten. The blessing that would result from finding a solution to the problem of the German soul is worth every sacrifice. And 1 don’t say this out of fondness for the German soul.
June 18. — Petain has made another speech which seems to be as startling as its predecessors, judging from the extracts. This masochistic attitude is beyond comprehension. There is something about Petain (and perhaps all the French) that now completely escapes me. His maudlin defeatism certainly stands for something real in France, made up of fear, of cowardice, of an almost religious need for expiation, of flagellation, of logical despair.
June 24. — In spite of the panic that has shaken the country since the Tobruk disaster, people are still reading a great deal about the future peace. There are several schools and a number of subschools. It would be an interesting though difficult job to try to classify them. First of all, there are two large groups which may be called the Idealists or Utopians and the Positivists or Realists.
The Idealists. — They believe in progress, in perfect ing society, in the fundamental goodness of Man. They derive partly from the Gospel, partly from Rousseau, or — in the American fashion — from both at the same time. This group includes Roosevelt and the New Dealers.
In it may also be included people like Dorothy Thompson, Herbert Agar, and other reformers.
The Positivists. — There are two large subdivisions: the simple conservatives or reactionaries,— such as the Old Guard Republicans, Herbert Hoover, Big Business, — and the neo-Nazis.
The latter are perhaps not very numerous as yet, but they are violent and arrogant. They derive from Machiavclli (or what they believe to be Machiavelli) and, without admitting it, from the German school (Ilaushofer, Ribbentrop). They include people like N. J. Spykman (America’s Strategy in World Politics) and Burnham (The Managerial Revolution). Stuart Chase, although he is probably quite unaware of it, belongs to this group in certain respects.
Their chief characteristic is fatalism. Burnham, for instance, clearly predicts the future world. This war will result in the creation of three super-states, those that will control the centers of world industrial production: Nor)Invest Europe (Germany), North America (the United States), and Asia (Japan). These three super-states will make war on each other after this one is over, in order to gain possession of the rest of the world.
This school of writers and thinkers is willfully and aggressively dogmatic, proceeding by categorical assertions, doubtless to show that it is unencumbered either by philosophical doubts or by sentiment. I can see that it will flourish in America.
June 27. —It’s better to read history than to live it. People who find it “thrilling” to be living in this age are victims of a strange delusion.
What is clear, however, is the great difficulty one has in not succumbing to the surrounding stupidity. I think the commentaries, in the papers as on the radio, are getting worse every day. The papers are slightly better off. Walter Lippmann, for instance, maintains a certain intellectual level. But he’s an exception. Most of the others are going around like wooden horses on a merry-go-round, to the accompaniment of the same old tunes.
Every time 1 listen to the radio I can’t help feeling that the w’ar is going to be lost, or at any rate that there is no more reason to win it. The mixture of advertisements with the news, the idiotic popular programs, the good humor or syrupy charm of the announcers, give rise to a feeling of demoralization that affects me in spite of myself. I’m sure that anything would be better than this system, that it’s absolutely impossible to go on with the war and still keep to the principle of sponsored broadcasts. Let me pick an example at random. At 11.00 P.M., CBS gives a quarter hour of news; the program is sponsored by Socony Oil — quite an inoffensive product, as a matter of fact. Tt begins with a few seconds of noise supposed to represent a galloping horse drawing near (The Flying Red Horse is the trade-mark of this oil). Then the announcer comes on and says something in the name of “your Socony dealer.”
Then the news, read by the same unidentified announcer in the same tone of voice — encouraging, velvety, caressing, like a warm vermouth. After about seven minutes, he goes back to a plug for t he Socony dealer, in which a connection with the war is established (take good care of your car to preserve your tires, increase your mileage, and so on), then he returns to the news once more. “And now the baseball scores.” (This part affects me more perhaps than all the rest. There is nothing that conflicts with war so much as sport.)
July 3. — The battle in the desert is raging. Nothing definite is known. It is worthy of note that in Egypt proper—that is, in Cairo and that area — people are still leading a normal existence, just as in Singapore on the eve of the Japanese occupation. The population is passive or resigned or completely fatalistic. The attitude of the Egyptians, who are threatened with falling under Nazi slavery within a few days, gives a good idea of what the crusade for the Common Man is worth. The Common Man, with all due respect to Wallace, doesn’t give a damn, anymore than he has all his life.
July 7. — I’ve never been particularly bullish about the war or, especially, about the better world that will follow. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, and so far as I am concerned I can’t imagine a better world than the one I have known. Obviously, that isn’t true for everyone. But what someone, 1 don’t remember who, has called “the fatal optimism” of the times, especially in America, is a philosophy that eventually degenerates into general stupidity. But if I have never shared the optimism and confidence of this elite to which I am supposed to belong, I have never been so conscious as I am now of a disintegration of that confidence and of that optimism.
Deep down inside of me, I am terribly fearful America may be preparing for a “ betrayal” that will be even worse than her defection in 1920. But this time it may be that religious scruples will force this country to assume the responsibilities it shirked twenty years ago. America will consider it her duty to look after the world. But she won’t do it without exacting payment, not in a material but in a moral sense: no other country is so convinced of being right, so arrogant in her moral superiority. If she takes a hand in world affairs, it will be to impose her OWJI principles, and she will regard her intervention as a blessing for lost and suffering mankind.
I know that there is danger in everything and that the world must choose between various dangers. The American danger is the least appalling. I prefer Henry Wallace to Rosenberg, Dorothy Thompson to Goebbels, Henry Luce to Himmler, and even, il necessary, Hoover to Goring; but a world dominated by the present American leaders is a fearful thought (and I haven’t mentioned either the churches or the universities, notorious hornets’ nests).
July 17. — Sometimes I wonder why I persist in going on with this diary. Obviously it can’t be published, and its interest is probably limited. There might have been a reason for it at a time when 1 was leading a more active life. Now I’m the complete onlooker, ray state of health itself being an excuse from as well as an obstacle to playing any active part. There is also my indolence, to which I must in all fairness render homage and which lias undoubtedly had a hand in the situation. In two years, ten years, fifty years, of what importance will be the reflections of a man whom circumstances have forced to live on the fringe of things in an era where nothing but action counts?
July 18. — Gandhi has announced that India must be given complete independence immediately or he will launch a passive disobedience movement. His argument, is that India will only defend herself when she has become a free nation. Gandhi has taken over the vocabulary of the democracies. He’s shoving his Common Man to the fore. But none of this sounds very sincere. Gandhi’s just trying a little blackmail, that’s all.
Some people are getting sentimental about India, especially in England and here. For my part, I’ve never felt, any attraction or even interest for that land. Neither the art, both tortuous and spiritless, nor the religion nor the philosophy of India has ever aroused my curiosity. This is obviously weakness on my part, a bias. 1 think of India and the Hindus as a sort of putrefied appendage dangling from the body of Europe and Asia, something unhealthy and in a state of ferment from which not king ever results.
July 24. — Cordell Hull made a speech on the radio last night, the importance of which had been stressed. In actual fact, the speech was completely insipid; Hull spoke of the post-war world and again trotted out his ideas about the creation of an international economic system based on good will, and so on. Barely three sentences about the present situation. Either through fatigue or ignorance, Hull doesn’t seem to understand that the world (including the Americans themselves) expects everything from America except this kind of sermon. Hull doesn’t fully appreciate there’s a war on, or at least not enough for the knowledge to disturb his obstinate dream which failed so long ago. “The nations of the world have only to conclude decent economic agreements for them to live happily together.” This is just about the limit of his philosophy. It’s the “virtuous materialism” of which Tocqueville speaks.
Finished Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. It’s the second time I’ve read the book this year. I wanted to see whether a number of first impressions were correct. I am more than satisfied. This book is one of the eight or ten books I’ve read that have had a lasting influence on me. I also think that Rebecca West’s book is the only really important book that has been written in the last ten years, or perhaps twenty.
It’s worth noting that the critics and the “intellectuals” in general haven’t done what they should have for this book. Perhaps their admiration, sincere as it is, is not great enough for them to ignore the patent absurdity of extolling a book which, whatever they do, will never be read by more than a few thousand people and will be really understood by only a few hundred.
Not that the book is “difficult,” but it’s long and explores such a vast territory — the whole field of European history and culture — that it requires too much concentration. This country reads a great many books of 1200 pages, but they must be either inanities like Gone with the Wind or spurious masterpieces like For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Rebecca West’s discovery furnishes the only plausible explanation for the apparent mysteries of our age. The myths of the falcon and lamb will be considered by many to be literary or poetic interpretations referring to contemporary defeatism, to that suicidal vertigo which seems to have taken possession of the Western peoples. But this explanation is much truer than all the political, economic, and social analyses that are now fashionable and that mean nothing. For instance, in my book I tried to analyze the nature of contemporary pacifism and defeatism, but Rebecca West provides a much truer explanation. To take an example, the extraordinary phenomenon of Petain can only be explained by the spirit of Kossovo and the sadistic obsession of sacrifice. .
Rebecca West illuminates certain aspects of Christianity that reveal the dual character, sublime and odious, of this system of thought.
Figures like Constantine and Gerda illuminate this period. Constantine, the civilized man, is a type that could still occasionally be encountered in Europe— not very frequently, it is true. The fact that he was a Jew is important. He’s a kind of Serbian Charles Swann. Gerda is Germany.
I thought it astonishing that a woman could have written a book like this. But l see that only a woman could have written it. That “lunacy” about which she speaks is necessary to get to the heart of things. The book is powerfully centered upon the author, violently and courageously so — faithfully subjective, as only a woman could dare to be in treating of such topics.
July 25. — I’ve had a letter from Dorothy Thompson. “The trouble with urging people to fight for survival is that they do not believe it,” she writes. “Only the people in the South know what it means to lose a war. They know that it means what Rebecca West knows it means.” Speaking of Rebecca, she is surprised that the so-called intellectuals are taking a greater interest in Hoover’s objectionable book. The answer is that in America, as formerly in France, the intellect uals have a kind of deep servility, all the more dangerous because it is concealed under a pretense of frankness and independence.
August 1. — I have read Germany and the Next War by F. von Bernhardi, a book published in 1911 which caused quite a sensation in its day. It’s not fashionable today to delve into German authors of this species to find proof of the continuity of what has dominated German thought for at least a hundred and fifty years. People prefer to believe that Hitler is a kind of monster, born of the poisoned swamps of Versailles, and that he forced his deplorable doctrines down the throat of an innocent Germany. They still cling to the idea, at least in America, that the Allies are fighting Hitler and not the Germans.
This view makes it unnecessary to entertain disagreeable thoughts. But, although Bernhardi, Treitschke, et al., obviously don’t speak for all Germans, one cannot help observing that it was the writings of these men which triumphed in Germany. Bernhardi’s book, written before the last war, might just as well have been written in 1921. It contains most of the ideas in Mein Kampf, and the entire Nazi philosophy is potentially there.
August 5. —The British have published a document signed by Gandhi which they seized last May from the records of the All-India Congress and in which Gandhi mentioned Indian independence as a means of negotiating with the Japanese. Gandhi has not denied the authenticity of the document, and Nehru explains that Gandhi believes in a Japanese and German victory.
Gandhi is another worshiper of Rebecca West’s Black Lamb. Since blood must be spilled and sacrifices made, he prefers to be on the side of the victim rather than the executioner. Gandhi is in the same boat with the Czar Lazar, Neville Chamberlain, and Beta in. They have a natural inclination toward defeat, a taste for massacre.
I wonder whether Gandhi’s “defeatism" is indigenous, the result of Western influence, or bot h. Gandhi exploits anti-imperialism with the zeal of an American clubwoman. He is against the British Empire and rants about it as though it were proved once and for all that the world has never known such a scourge. “Better the Japs than the British” is the twin of “Better Hitler than Blum.”
This Indian business is another symptom of the universal revolt against Western philosophy. Like Hitler, Gandhi would destroy democracy with democracy’s own weapons. By basing her argument on Western ideals (the right of peoples to selfdetermination, nationalism, anti-imperialism, and so forth), India will make her contribution to the collapse of the Western world.
It is beginning to come out that the weakness of democracy (and by that I mean the entire ideological and material structure in which we arc supposed to be living) lies in the fact that it has never existed. For a long time, at least a hundred and fifty years, we have been living in the belief that the People was sovereign, and that we had found a government through which it could express its will.
In actual fact, democracy does not exist anywhere, even here. The party system and the electoral machinery in America are a continual negation of democracy. We cling desperately to the idea that the People cannot be wrong and we have proclaimed the divinity of the Common Man, but these are pitiful subterfuges. What the masses really want is a ruler or, if need be, a tyrant.
The history of the various Western nations (France and England in particular) proves that it has not been the masses who have overthrown tyrants — executed Charles I or Louis XVI — but organized minorities, new (or old) elites who for a while were able to give the impression that they were representing the People — that is, God.
Democracy, in the philosophically ideal form expressed by men like Wilson, has never been a world force. In practice, it has led to the Mass Man, to Hitler or Gandhi.
August 7. — Nothing is more difficult to analyze clearly than the American attitude toward religious questions, and in particular toward Christianity. I confess that after ten years of residence over here I am still unable to make head or tail out of this problem. Religion, Christianity, takes on a political aspect here, or rather politics is flavored with Christianity. The alliance is a historical one. The Puritans, who confounded the ideas of crime and of sin, are at the bottom of this business; but so is all of Protestantism, which is not a religion but a conception of life. I don’t know whether or not Americans are believers. It’s far and away the most unpopular topic of conversation with them. They are obviously afraid of it and prefer to let the question remain in a nebulous state. In reality, whenever Americans talk about their mission in the world, they express themselves in religious terms. In their opinion, America is an essentially Christian nation with a Christian destiny, and the fact that all this is extremely vague has no effect on this attitude.
Last night Quincy Howe, who has for some time been taking over Elmer Davis’s job as commentator for CBS, said: “How can a great warrior like Churchill be expected to get on with a great saint like Gandhi?” The whole tone of his commentary showed that in the present dispute his sympathies lay with India. The two questions that come immediately to mind are the following: Why is Gandhi a saint? But, assuming that he is, which is more important: to beatify Gandhi or to win the war?
Discussing the same subject this morning, the New York Times does a beautiful job of sitting on the fence. The British may not be entirely in the wrong, but on the other hand they are not completely right, and so forth. Whether the British are in the right or in the wrong about this matter, it seems to me that the first duty of their allies, the Americans, is to support them all the way. Gandhi may be a saint, but so far as the war is concerned, he is certainly a rebel or a traitor.
(To be continued)