How difficult it is for us to understand this heroic
strain in the German character ! We also have our heroes, yet we do not regard heroism as a destiny ; there is a vast difference between Westminster Abbey and Valhalla. Their mystic faith in heroism as an end in itself comes, I suppose, from an absence of spiritual self-assurance and their un- healthy passion for extremes. They lack our sense of humour even as they lack the intellectual balance of the French. For them Kultur implies no complacent enjoyment of past tradition ; it implies an unceasing expansion of future energy. Their passion for what Alain calls "la difficulte vaincue " is such that they create difficulties where no diffi- culties need exist. Compare our Bradshaw with the German equivalent ; I seldom read Bradshaw without tears, yet the Reichskursbuch with its incessant arrows, hieroglyphs and symbols implies a deep knowledge of palaeography. But why should their heroism drive them again and again to suicide? "What distinguishes us," writes Friedrich Sieburg, "from other nations is the bounds we set to the instinct of self-preservation." "Our sense," he writes again, "of the harmful has been impaired. By un- masking the relativity of moral values we have acquired a sense of impregnability and live in a state alternating between extreme objectivity and suicide." But surely it is unnecessary to live in a state of such exaggerated discom- fort. Friedrich Sieburg is a cultured and enlightened man. How comes it that he can write such nonsense? Why is it that the Germans, who as individuals are so charming, should, when they coagulate, coagulate into a swarm of frightened wasps? Why is it that they possess every form of courage except civic courage? Why is it that they are so devoted to martyrdom? Why is it that they enjoy being disliked? "I have often," wrote Goethe, "a bitter pain when thinking of the German people, so valuable as indi- viduals, so hopeless as a whole." Yet even Goethe (who was good at analysis) was unable to define the reason for his bitter pain.
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