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an attitude of indifference as a normal attitude under existing
circumstances, and yet it seems to me probable that there must be
thousands of little people in Germany who are very much more concerned
with their own everyday affairs than with considerations of national
politics. Moreover, intellectuals tend to forget how many people live
merely from day to day with a feeling of reasonable satisfaction when a
day passes with reasonable comfort. Of course, when things get bad
enough that is no longer the case, but as I have said there is no
evidence of malnutrition in Berlin, and the sufferings of the Germans
today are what may be described as moral and spiritual rather than
physical. I should think that today the amount of physical pain in
Germany as in other countries that arises from disease is a hundredfold
greater than the physical suffering that may be directly or indirectly
of political origin. The truth is that only one remark that I heard
while I was in Germany implies a tendency to look at the phenomena with
cold objectivity. This remark was made by perhaps the most
distinguished of all the persons with whom I talked. It was elicited by
my statement that I hoped to understand and did not wish to criticize
or to form moral judgments.  The reply was something like this. Perhaps
after all what has been happening in Germany in the last few years is a
process which, apart from its details, was inevitable and determined
independently of the plans or ideas or wishes of any single group of
individuals. Perhaps, in short, it is the working out of a political,
social and economic process, already in many respects determined by
forces that were present before Hitler came into power. Now that I have
put these words down I realize that they are my own and that something
less was said to me. In short, this is my interpretation of the opinion
behind what was said, but I think it tolerably correct as an inter-