Adolf Hitler's Table Talk-1941-1944

368 TORIES AND LABOUR of

368 TORIES AND LABOUR of English politics, that doesn't prevent him from being an important political factor—in so far as the Army retains its strength and integrity. For the British Army is monarchist in spirit, and is, so to speak, entirely recruited amongst the aristocracy and the Conservative world. Now, these people are not at present showing any inclination to make the slightest concessions to the people. It's enough to glance through an English illustrated periodical to be convinced of that. One sees only photos of men belonging to the aristocracy, and two thirds of them are photographed in uniform. One cannot compare the English Conservatives to the old German bourgeoisie that formed the nationalist parties before 1933. The English Conservatives identify themselves with the Empire, they represent traditions and a solidly established form of society—and it's difficult to see them capitulating to the people, like the French aristocracy in 1789. Quite the contrary, they're striving, by means of a gigantic organisation, to propagate their own ideas amongst the people, trying to fill it with the patriotic fanaticism that inspires its airmen and sailors. To establish himself against the Conservatives, it would take a Cromwell at the head of the Labour Party, for the Conservatives will not yield without a fight. Now, although Cripps (who has Stalin's confidence) has succeeded in sowing Socialist ideas in England, I don't think he carries enough guns for this rôle. From my point of view, a Red (and therefore fallen) England would be much less favourable than an England of Conservatives. In fact, a Socialist England, and therefore an England tainted with Sovietism, would be a permanent danger in the European space, for she would founder in such poverty that the territory of the British Isles would prove too small for thirty million inhabitants to be able to keep alive there. I hope, therefore, that Cripps will be sunk by the fiasco of his mission to India—the most difficult mission with which an Englishman can now be charged. If he isn't, it would become more and more difficult to avoid civil war on British soil. But the mobilisation of the masses, on which the Labour Party's propaganda is working, and which would be the result of the execution of the trade unions' new programme, should be regarded as a

CHURCHILL PREFERABLE TO CRIPPS 369 very serious threat. Between Churchill and Cripps I have no hesitation in choosing. I prefer a hundred times the undisciplined swine who is drunk eight hours of every twenty-four, to the Puritan. A man who spends extravagantly, an elderly man who drinks and smokes without moderation, is obviously less to be feared than the drawing-room Bolshevist who leads the life of an ascetic. From Churchill one may finally expect that in a moment of lucidity—it's not impossible—he'll realise that the Empire's going inescapably to its ruin, if the war lasts another two or three years. Cripps, a man without roots, a demagogue and a liar, would pursue his sick fancies although the Empire were to crack at every corner. Moreover, this theoretician devoid of humanity lacks contact with the mass that's grouped behind the Labour Party, and he'll never succeed in understanding the problems that occupy the minds of the lower classes. To judge Cripps accurately, and to appreciate the dangers he represents, one must not forget that the Tories have always been the props of the Empire, and that Cripps's gaining control would mean the end of the Empire. With his hypocritical social programmes, he'd be sure to dig a pit between the mother-country and the Dominions, especially the Catholic Canadians, Australia and South Africa. One must therefore eagerly hope for the failure of his mission to India. It is questionable, by the way, whether Cripps will get any hearing from the Indian people. The Indian world has already been so disturbed by the presence of the Japanese on its frontiers, and by the fall of Singapore, that the man of compromise, Nehru, has been eclipsed by Bhose. If to-day Cripps endeavours, with the help of blackmail or begging, to induce the Indians to resist the Japanese, I doubt whether Nehru, however much he would like to, would be able to help him effectively. Nehru's fate will be like that of the Socialists in 1918 who were swept away by the masses. I'm thinking of Ebert—who had come to the meeting in the Treptow park with the intention of opposing the munitions strike. He began by making a few concessions to the crowd, in the hope of getting himself heard—but he was quickly overcome by the crowd's enthusiasm, with the result that he himself had to preach the very strike he had intended to