Hitler—I was interested, by the way, in the satisfaction with
which a German friend who listened with me to the first reports of last Sunday's speech hailed it as the first real admission of serious trouble about German morale—seems to be a good deal bothered about how to handle the delicate question of Napoleon. First comes a story (true or otherwise) of the Fiihrer's visit to Paris, when he had the First Consul's remains at the Invalides hoisted up to ground-level
and ordered every German soldier to do homage to them. Seco the inevitable comparison, in Sunday's speech, between Napoleon' difficulties in Russia and Hitler's own. Third, a message fr Lisbon in Tuesday's Times to the effect that details of Napoleon career are now being excluded from school-books in occupied Franc as well as in the rest of occupied Europe and in Germany, own to the awkwardness of the fact that the first dictator-conqueror ende after all in failure: " They want to forget Boulogne, Moscow— Waterloo." I wish Hitler would do what I am doing myself the moment, read Caulaincourt's memoirs of the Moscow campai. The writer, who reports in lengthy and absorbing detail ih Emperor's conversation before Moscow, in Moscow and all Moscow (they shared the same sledge on the retreat), throws int dramatic relief the one infatuated conviction by which the imad was consumed—the certainty that Russia must capitulate and acce any terms offered her. Here, too, the parallel is beyond reproach.
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