-2-                             
 
 
six or eight months he has made many, many announcements
 
of peaceful purpose, and at the time being, and I think
 
he is perfectly sincere and is consequently willing to     
 
                                   ~ ~
negotiate with France. However, in the back off his mind
 
is the old German idea of dominating Europe through war-
 
fare.
 
 
Hitler's first lieutenant is Joseph Goebbels,
 
some ten years younger, a miniature figure who was not
 
engaged in the war but who imbibed the bitterness against
 
France and the rest of the world during that long struggle.
 
After the war he engaged in organizing belligerent groups
 
in western Germany and took every possible occasion to
 
challenge the old Socialist regime which submitted to the
 
Treaty of Versailles. He joined Hitler and made constant
 
declarations that the German people, once united, would
 
domineer the world. While Hitler is a fair orator as German
 
oratory goes, Goebbels is a past master. He makes a point
 
of stirring animosities and hatreds whenever there is
 
opportunity, and he has combined all the newspaper, radio,
 
publications and art activities of Germany into one vast
 
propaganda machine. Through these agencies he is bent upon
 
forcing all Germans into one solid phalanx. He is far
 
cleverer than Hitler, much more belligerent, and, I am
 
told, always refuses to have contacts with foreigners.
 
 
The third member of this triumvirate is Hermann
 
Coering, about forty, who comes from South Germany, and
 
who was involved, as Goebbels also, in the early Putsch
 
movement in Munich; was a fugitive from justice for some
 
months while Hitler was in jail, and became intensely
 
violent against all democratic and socialist groups. His 
 
wife died as a result of exposure while they were both 
 
fugitives from justice. The liberal-socialist government
 
issued pardons for Hitler and Goering aboat the same time
 
and they recommenced their belligerent agitations about 
 
1926-27. While Goebels represents something approaching 
 
a communistic body of German opinion (mobilized against 
 
official Communism), Goering represents a more aristocratic 
 
and Prussian Germanism. He is not without support amongst 
 
the larger business interests. He had marvelous exper-
 
ience during the war as an aviator and became as intensely
 
war-like as either Goeboels or Hitler. He is the Prussian 
 
Minister President, and has mobilized all the old Prussian
 
 
extremists