for the defeat of their government for their own sake and for the sake of the general future. But I must insist that in view of the all-too-great credulousness and the desire for loyalty in the German character the dilemma in this case is especially acute, and I cannot resist a feeling of deepest resentment against those who have forced the German patriotism into such a position.
These people have been deluded and seduced into crimes that cry to High Heaven. They have begun to atone for them and they will atone even more severely. It cannot be otherwise; common morality or, if you wish, divine justice demands it. But we out here, who saw disaster coming, we who ahead of our compatriots intoxicated by a fraudulent revolution, ahead of all the rest of the world, were convinced that the Nazi rule could never bring anything except war, destruction, and catastrophe, we see no great difference between that which these scoundrels have done to us and what they have done to our people at home. We hate the corrupters and we long for the day which rids the world of them. But with very few exceptions we are far from being victims of a wretched emigrant-hatred against our own land and we do not desire the destruction of our people. We cannot deny their responsibility, for somehow man is responsible for his being and doing; but we are rather inclined to speak of an historic curse, a dark destiny and aberration than of crime and guilt.
The case of Germany is for that reason such a confusing and complicated one because in it good and evil, the beautiful and the detestable are combined and blended in a singular way. For example, the great artistic personality of Richard Wagner has often been mentioned in connection with the phenomenon of national socialism, and Mr. A. Hitler's preference for his art has been pointed out, a preference against which one would like to protect Wagner and which, nevertheless, is not without significance and instructive meaning. The Wagnerian art revolution, though upon an incomparably higher plane, was a phenomenon related to the national socialist revolution. It cannot be denied that a work such the the "Ring of the Nibelung" is fundamentally directed against the whole modern culture and civilization in the form in which they were dominant since the
