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pretation, and it was, as I have said, the only sign of a really objective
point, of view that I noticed.
 
 
 This remark implies another. My informants are, upon the whole,
judging moralistically. Now I think there can be no doubt that many of the
things done by the present government in Germany, while certainly open to
condemnation on any moral grounds that I should be willing to accept, have
produced and continue to produce results which are in part useful and not
infrequently necessary to the well-being of the country. In cases of this
kind the disapproval of intellectuals, however strong, may mean very little.
In any case it should be taken with the utmost caution. If there were
evidence that anybody in the present government except Schacht is capable of a really mechanistic and objective attitude toward the problems that he
has to solve, I should attach very great importance indeed to this remark,
and should be tempted to reject much more of what I was told than I do reject. But, as I have said, the evidence is that beyond a certain narrow
range Hitler is sometimes even less capable of objectivity than his enemies
the intellectuals, and I think that, on the whole, one may take it that there is very little Machiavellian planning in the present government. That is not to say, however, that there is a dearth of selfish, unscrupulous trickery.
 
 
 I conclude with an opinion that is something more than a guess:
In method as distinguished from purpose the great weakness of Nazi policy
within Germany is the failure to utilize and to exploit systematically many
of the strong sentiments that widely exist in the population rather than to
attack them, and try to change them; for many cannot be changed but are activated and strengthened by persecution.
 
 
August 11, 1937