The Hitler government, vis-a-vis its domestic critics, is thus anxious
to foster to the utmost the idea of the isolation of Germany in an unfriendly world. The British Government is bent upon taking no steps which could give colour to the idea that she would be any party to a policy of isolating Germany. But it is not in the power of any government to prevent that spiritual isolation which would arise if the German people accepted with cynical tolerance the ideas implicit in the present Nazi conception of strong government. There is a certain grim irony in the implied criticism of Germany to be _found in a decree of the Russian Government, which declares that the O.G.P.U. are no longer to have the power to sentence men to be shot without open trial— Soviet Russia, that is, has passed beyond that crude revolutionary phase. It is disconcerting to learn that un- official opinion in Berlin appears to be less interested in the possibility of political reform than in the balancing of the armed forces which will ultimately bring this or that element to the top—it is apparently now recog- nised that the ultimate decisive factor will be the Reichs- wehr. It is obviously impossible to estimate with any assurance the underlying drift of opinion in the circumstances existing in Germany today. And it is difficult for foreign governments to shape a clear policy towards her when no one can tell where she will stand tomorrow.
