he[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic
attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the
last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed
tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond
ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such aview of
life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and
the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children
playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is
never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers;
tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his
own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength,
knows that human beings don’t only want comfort,
safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control
and, in general, common sense; they also, at least
intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to
mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However
they may be as economic theories, Fascism and
Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any
hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably
true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All
three of the great dictators have enhanced their power
by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples.
Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more
grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good
time,’’ Hitler has said to them “I offer you struggle,
danger and death,” and as a result a whole nation
flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get
sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the
last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation
“Greatest happiness of the greatest number” is a good
slogan, but at this moment “Better an end with horror
than a horror without end” is a winner. Now that we
are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought
not to underrate its emotional appeal.
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