With patience, writes David Cart in "Life," America will solve its problems of unemployment and security and production and consumption. It is not perfect by far. It is obviously due for changes in business, the family, the Church, the State, science and transportation. But certainly we can think. of better changes than Hitler has to offer. Our world is, of course, worth fighting for. It is infinitely more. It is the cause on which all history and the hope of this planet depend. The eternal soul of man waits on its outcome. d The Nazi war technique of propaganda is by now quite plain and quite simple. It is exactly the reverse of all previous human experience; hence, it is astonishingly effective at first.
All adults and many children have observed that no man who yells threats acts on them. The loud talker does not fight. But the, Nazis yell murder; they demoralize the weak: they excite the contempt of the strong; and then they strike just as they said they would.
The basis for this technique is that Hitler fs certain that people who lack strict controls are total, uncontrollable fools. He figures that they will either panic at the yelling or decide he will not strike. Those who do the first accuse the others of being fifth columnists and vice versa. The notion that they will both prepare calmly for the blow is supposed to be impossible under Hitler's. psychological laws.
So long as he was dealing with Europeans he was right. For he was dealing with leaders who believed in security without risk. But Americans have a gift for action. They like the offensive. They like results. They like to do something just for the sake of seeing whether they are right or wrong.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.