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experts are demoted to the job of finding ways and means of servingHitler's will (in the democratic world they are allowed to spend theirtime explaining why it is impossible to do what man desires) and the practicalmen in Hitler's continent can now be divided into three classes—thosewho have been interned, those who have been in jail, and those who havebeen blackmailed into becoming Quislings. It would seem that in ourforcing-house of history the practical view of life is not a success. 5Here is Mr. Herbert Agar, one of our leading apostles of the cultof greatness, who cannot help observing that Hitler has succeededand that the practical men who said he could not succeed have beenliquidated. I know Mr. Agar does not like to see practical men orothers murdered, but he reveals clearly at least implied acceptanceof Dr. Gentile's theory that the world cannot be enclosed in factand that some kind of leader must arise who does not believe infacts, who does not believe in money, who does not believe inbudgets, who does not believe in arithmetic, and who does not believein history, and who will set the experts and the practical men not toadvising him but to contriving means to achieve his ends. There isalso the singular illusion in this quotation that the experts whopredicted that Hitler would bankrupt Germany were wrong. It alldepends upon what one means by the word "bankrupt." If ever therewas a bankrupt nation in this world it is Germany, whether we takethe orthodox or the moral meaning of the word.Yet it is this spirit, brewed in the minds of a frustrated strongpeople, that will provide the dynamic element which will enable themore pragmatic imperialists to unfurl the banners and weave thephilosophies and produce the slogans behind which the nation maybe drawn away from its own unsolved problems to the regenerationof the world.To sum it up, what I am trying to say with as much emphasis asI can is that the germs of a vigorous imperialism are here amongus—I mean the moral germs. And if the economic problem of thenation should seem, when the war ends, to lead us off into someimperialist adventures, the moral support of such adventures will notbe lacking. Our peculiarly happy geographical situation has in thepast kept us free from the powerful temptations to aggression that8 A Time for Greatness, by Herbert Agar, Little, Brown, New York, 1942.224