BERLIN LETTER
in the underground driven to what in the past would have been con–
sidered "betrayal" and even "treason." They were against the Govern–
ment, against the Society, for its defeat by any and all means; they
were against the German war, hoped for (and to an extent worked for)
ap
Allied victory, the victory of the national enemy. Losing not only
their wealth but also the "Fatherland," the socialists have been reduced
to a radical movement of the dispossessed-a genuinely poor Church!
(3) The orthodoxy too has been shattered: the party today with almost
a million members in the West alone is conceived of as a mass popular
instrument, and in behalf of a program of socialism which is understood
as wider than Marxism and greater than the proletariat. Moreover, in
Kurt Schumacher the democratic-Left has a leader who possesses the
qualities of personal power and mass dynamism, the
enthusiasm,
usually
monopolized by the enemies of liberty and reason. He makes his mis–
takes, but I think he senses that socialism without
charisma
will perish;
and I have always felt, unlike alarmed liberal critics, that his demagogic
brilliance is properly tempered (rare as it is and difficult as it may be
to believe) with a good, wise, self-critical humility.
Melvin
J.
Lasky
P.S.-Just a last note to tell you that Jean-Paul Sartre has been in
Berlin for a week, and astoundingly enough the town, with its theaters,
forums, radio stations, cabarets, newspapers, has abandoned all else to
give itself passionately over to the problems of art and philosophy. It
is curious, and for my own part touching, how in a moment this city
can care so little about
Existenz
and so much about Existentialism (it
almost amounts to a mass movement).
M.
J.
L.
491
