THIS QUARTER
15
of Peace was a principal speaker at a big "SAVE CZECHOSLOV–
AKIA!" rally. The other headliner was Dorothy Thompson, whose
column in theN.
Y. Herald-Tribune,
usually consecrated to abuse of
the New Deal, was being temporarily devoted to propaganda for
the holy war against Hitler. The Communist Party
also
too~an
enthusiastic, though unofficial, part in the affair.
By now, Thomas Mann should be used to such company. During
the past year he has been a traveling salesman for "democracy," that
is for the
status quo
in certain capitalist nations and against the
status quo
in certain other capitalist nations. He has been a tireless
Guest-of-Honor and Speaker-of-the-Occasion, a prolific anti-fascist
pamphleteer, and the recipient of many academic degrees. His little
book,
The Coming Victory of Democracy,
was joyously hailed by
Samuel Sillen in the
New Masses,
Max Lerner in the
Nation,
and
Simeon Strunsky in theN.
Y. Times.
All three reviewers, of course,
stressed Dr. Mann's "realistic"
(Masses)
and "memorable"
(Times)
presentation of the case for collective security-a doctrine which
the events of the past quarter have rendered as obsolete as Original
Sin. Nor can the title of Dr. Mann's book be called, at the mome,nt,
a happy one.
Such embarrassments have been all too frequent in Thomas
Mann's career as a political thinker. During the last war, he gave his
active support to the Imperial Government, going so far as to write
an entire book justifying Germany's part in the war. In his
A Sketch
of My Life,
he mentions with some pride that a special performance
of his drama,
Fiorenza,
was given
in
Brussels for the entertainment
of the German General Staff. Of the war, he writes: "There was
nothing in my tastes or cultural traditions--which were moral and
metaphysical, not political or social-to hold me aloof." (He does
not explain this rather peculiar formulation.) In 1922, he came out
publicly for the Weimar Republic, saying-and not at all cynically–
that it appealed to
him
because it was a compromise which, at bottom,
changed nothing. The Republic continued to change nothing, and
Mann continued to support it-until the Nazis broke the stalemate.
Mter 1932, he seems for a time to have put his faith mostly in Cul–
ture.
"If
the intellectuals of Europe will unite to declare in plain
terms: we want no war," he said in a speech to the PEN club, "and
if
you let it come to war again, we shall refuse the project all moral
support; moreover we consider war spiritually impossible today and
therefore reject it and withdraw from it under protest ... then there
will
be no war." The 1938 crisis showed just how much such idealistic
statements were worth.
·
Thomas Mann is a great novelist, and he must be respected for
