GERMAN IMPRESSIONS
13
committed by the Nazis they are, of course, nothing. I cannot make up
my mind whether there is any sense in measuring them in this way.
Yet it seems to me that a driver of a truck, when, chewing his gum,
he drives over a German horse and cart, may perhaps have an image
of Nazi crimes in Holland in his mind. The whole development of
our time can, as it were, absorb a good many such small satisfactions
in the way of revenge. But one should never lose sight of the fact
that the one and only true measure of our actions is not a picture
of the past, but one of a future in which it is possible for the peoples
of the world to live at peace with one another.
The C-- 's complained a good deal about non-fraternization.
How, they asked, could we influence the Germans if we were not
allowed to speak to them nor they to us? Did we realize that Germany
had been completely isolated from ideas outside the country for many
years, and that now, unless we gave some lead and introduced our
own ideas, Germany would be left in a mental vacuum? The Vacuum
became quite a key phrase at this time. Finally it even occurred in a
directive from Field Marshal Montgomery.
C- drew my attention to the contrast between our behavior
and our propaganda. Thousands of Germans during the war, especial–
ly during the last stages, had listened to the B.B.C. and to American
broadcasts promising democracy, freedom, discrimination between
our treatment of the good and the bad Germans. Was it in our own
interest now to create the impression that our propaganda had simply
been empty words and vain promises, like that of Goebbels?
BONN
I left the C--'s and walked back through Bonn towards the
Officers' Transit Mess.
A pleasant road, overshadowed with trees, running parallel to
the Rhine, leads from the end of the road where they live to the
centre of Bonn which, from this end of the town, may be said to
begin with the University whose entrance bridges the road. On
either side of this broad leafy road there were houses and hotels,
many of them destroyed. Heaps of rubble often made it impossible
to keep to the pavement.
Beyond the University gate everything, including almost the
whole of the main old University buildings, the shopping centre and
the marker-place is destroyed. Over the gate the wall of the Uni–
versity stood, a yellow colour, sum1ounted by the gleaming gold
