Evening star., 1938-10-19
Bv WALLACE r. BEUEL,

reflections on Violence.
They enable us to understand the
activities, the feelings and the ideas
Of a people preparing to enter into .
decisive struggle" he added in q
letter to Daniel Halevy. They are
not descriptions OF facts, but ex-
pressions Of will"
Sorel was talking about his own
myth" OF the general strike As the
decisive instrument Of the class
struggle and of the whole Socialist
movement. What he said about the
myth Of the general strike, however,
also applies in many ways to the
Nazi myth Of race.
For there are at least two key
questions to be asked about the Nazi
race theory. The first question Is,
rs the theory Sounds 1t descrip-
ton of facts?" The second question
is, whether the theory is sound or
not, what are the results Of its adop-
ton and enforcement by the Nazis--
as an instrument, how does 1t act
upon present conditional"
Race Theory Held False.
To the first question there are an
swers in plenty which say that the
Nazi race theory is utterly false from
beginning to end.
That there is no such thing as
an Aryan race and that the Germans
are neither Aryan. nor Nordic. nor
race, never troubled the politicians
: and the chauvinists," says s. K Pad
over, for one, writing in Foreign
Affairs"
The German scientist Virchow
called the theory Of an Aryan race
pure fiction Reinach dubbed it pre-
historic romance And Max Mueller,
the German scholar who was respon-
sible for the word 'Aryan,' bluntly
rejected the distortion Of his concept.
ITO me- he wrote, an ethnologist
who speaks of an Aryan race, Aryan
blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great
sinner as a linguist who speaks
Of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a
brachycephalic grammar. 1t is worse
than Babylonian confusion Of tongues
it is downright theft. -.
"1f I say Aryan. mean neither
blood nor bones nor hair nor skull.
I mean those who speak an Aryan
language
"No Pure Races Left"
There are no pure races left"
Benito Mussolini told Emil Ludwig
some time before the recent discovery
by Fascist scientists that the Italians,
too, are Aryans Race! it is feeling.
not realty. No such doctrine Will
ever fnd wide acceptance here in
Italy National pride has no need
for the delirium Of race"
And not only are the Nazis indicted
on a charge of uttering false theory.
They are also accused Of uttering
false theory for the basest of motives.
Next to the outright imprisonment.
torture or execution Of opponents"
persecution Of minorities is the most
ancient, most direct and most I'M
mediately ef1icacious" Of political de-
vices, Frederick L. Schuman writes,
for example.
Fear of government is transmitted
into detestation Of those branded bv
the government as public enemies"
Schuman says, and this persecution
Of minorities affords to those dis
gruntled strata near the bottom Of the
social hierarchy the emotional salts
faction of being able to look down
upon q group which is still lower in
the social scale"
Rod for DETECTING Unrest.
In the modern world, anti-Semitism
has most often served this purpose OF
social lightning rod for DETECTING un-
rest onto helpless minority, Schuman
adds, and he quotes Bismarck telling
the Jewish merchant Bleichroeder in
1880 that he tolerated anti-Semitism
in the Second Reich only because 1t
provided safe discharge for the anti
capitalistic feelings Of the lower middle
class.
These judgments, chosen almost At
random, are typical Of much OF the
worlds reaction to the Nazi race
theory. These are some Of the an
swers which have been given to the
question, "Is the theory true or false?"
There still remains, however, the
second question:
Even supposing that the whole Nazi
race theory is false, what are the
effects, not only on Germany itself.
but also on the rest Of the world, Of
the adoption and enforcement OF the
theory?
The world has had time, by now,
to decide what it thinks is the an
swer to the question whether the Nazi
race theory is true or false. But only
now for the first time is it possible to
answer the second question as to the
consequences Of the adoption and en-
forcement Of the theory by what IS
perhaps the most powerful political
regime in the world today.
It is in answering this second ques-
ton that Sorels comments on revolu-
tionary myths are so apt.
For the Nazi race dogma is most
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