PARTISAN REVIEW
preventing all future military movement. A British suggestion that all the
traditional gratuitous titles in the
community-Herr Oberinspektor,
Herr Gemeindevorsteher, Herr Hofmaler Professor-be
forbidden. An
American suggestion that the cursed Prussian clippedness of
Jawohl!
be
outlawed and the language returned to the simple democratic affirma–
tion of
]a.
And a Russian suggestion for the purging of, among other
things, all operettas which in
,(igeunerbaron-style
perpetuate the feudal
fictions and aristocratic illusions of a reactionary past. I really should
have liked to take this all very seriously. For, in a way, it was the finest
flower of Big Four unity, the cross-pollinated product of allied social
wisdoms. Who better than the French (whose Paris of Baron Hauss–
mann had its streets remodeled as military avenues) understand the
relations between law and order and motion on the boulevard? Who
better than the English know the interplay of titles and caste symbols
with the stability and tone of a social order? As for the Americans,
language has always been a political signal, with slang serving as a
kind of Whitmanesquerie of the mass tongue; and surely the Russians
qualify as clinical students of social opiates. My only regret is that the
European crisis could not be solved by so charming an intrusion into
German society of major foreign historic styles. (What a keen theme
for a Henry James!)
Finally, a word about German socialism. Insofar as anything ever
really changes in this iron-molded nation-believe me, Heine is still a
good guide in the Harz, and George Grosz in Berlin !-there have been
a few twists in the destiny of social democracy. From Bebel to Ebert
the movement had been afflicted by three cancerous growths: first, its
wealth,
the respectability of its bureaucracy, its vested interests in the
established trade-unionism, its linkage to the established society, its
shares in industry and banks, its middle-class habits and psychology, its
conservatism-second, its
nationalism,
its stereotyped German patriotism,
its devotion to the Fatherland, its incapacity for international perspec–
tives-third, its
orthodoxy,
its text-glossing sectarianism, its isolation
from the masses of the people. Here, thank God, there have been some
changes. The rise and collapse of the Nazi Reich did not mean the
destruction of the body of traditional German society, but it did destroy
the old German Left. ( 1) The wealth of the party has been wiped out.
It
is beginning with a weak, propertyless labor movement, with no
headquarters, no buildings, no bank interests, no comfortable well-fed
officials. Germany at last has a poor Left, a poor Social Democracy,
with nothing to lose and a world to win. (2) The nationalism, in its
extreme old vicious forms, has gone too. The Left was anti-Nazi and
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