Hitler's Table Talk

656 GERMAN CRAFTS
Ludendorff in another, myself in a third, and in the fourth—her
own husband !
Every time I visit the Permanent Exhibition of German
Crafts, I get angry. In the first place, the furniture exhibited is
simply a bad joke; as is also the method of indicating the prices.
One sees, for example, a label with RM 800 and one assumes,
naturally, that it applies to the whole suite. One then finds that
the bench, the picture and the curtain are not included ; and the
last straw is that these trashy articles claim to represent a form
of art styled popular—the art of our small independent craftsmen.
In reality the public are not interested. When the man in
the street pays twelve hundred marks for something, he expects
value for his money, and he does not care a rap whether the
nails have been driven in by machine or hand. Honestly, what
do we mean when we say the work of a craftsman? Why buy
furniture in plain unvarnished wood, when the furniture in-
.dustry will give you beautiful furniture polished to perfection
for the same money? In Stortz' shop, for example, I have seen
excellent furniture, which modest people would be delighted
to possess. Arts and Crafts? Rubbish!
If a nigger delights in wearing a pair of cuffs and nothing else,
why should we interfere with him?
I have been reading tales of the burning of corpses at Benares.
If we were out there, our hygiene experts would rise in their
wrath and institute a crusade, backed by the most rigorous
penalties, to suppress this evil practice! Every day official
chemists would come and analyse the river-water, and in no
time a new and gigantic Ministry of Health would be set up !
The British, on the other hand, have contented themselves with
forbidding the immolation of widows. The Indians can think
themselves lucky that we do not rule India. We should make
their lives a misery ! Just think of it ! Two hundred yards downstream
of the place where they pitch the half-burned bodies
of their dead into the Ganges, they drink the river-water!
Nobody ever takes any harm from it. But would we stand for a
thing like that?
The inhabitants of Budapest have remained faithful to their
river, and are rightly proud of two things—the beautiful monuments
and buildings which adorn the surrounding hillsides, and