Intellectual fascists are particularly liable to the error of thinking that this sort of thing is above morality, beyond good and evil. The "cricket-moralists" are people like ourselves and the English, who are agitated because "innocent" men are put to death; the hard-headed ones answer that innocence isn't important; effectiveness is what counts. Yet the democratic-cricket-morality is in the long run more realistic than the tough school which kills its enemies first and then finds out if they were guilty. The reason we allow a scientist to cry for nitrates after we have decided on potash is that we have to keep scientific investigation alive; we cannot trust ourselves for too long to the potash group. In five years, both nitrate and potash may be discarded because we have found something better. And no scientist will for long retain his critical pioneering spirit if an official superior can reject his research. (An Army board rejected the research of General William Mitchell and it took a generation for Army men to recover initiative; and this was in an organization accustomed to respect rank and tradition. In science, which is more sensitive, the only practical thing is to reward the heretic and the explorer even while one adopts the idea of the orthodox.)
This question of heresy, apparently so trifling, is critical for us because it is a clue to the weakness of Hitlerism and it provides us with the only strategy by which Hitlerism can be destroyed.
CHAPTER II[ToC]
Strategy for the Citizen
There is a tendency at this moment to consider Hitler a master strategist, master psychologist, master statesman. His analysis of democracy, however, leaves something unsaid, and the nervous strong men who admire Hitler, as well as the weaklings who need "leadership", are doing their best to fill in the gaps. The Hitlerian concept of totality allows no room for difference; an official bread ration and an official biochemistry are equally to be accepted by everyone; in democracy Hitler finds a deplorable tendency to shrink from rationing and to encourage deviations from the established principles of biochemistry. This, he says, weakens the State; for one thing it leads to endless discussion. (Hitler is an orator, not a debater; dislike of letting other people talk is natural; his passion for action on a world-scale, immense in space, enduring for all time, has the same terrific concentration on himself.) Hitler's admirers in a democracy take this up with considerable pleasure; in each of his victories they see an argument against the Bill of Rights. Then war comes; sugar is wanting and we accept a ration card; supreme commands are established in various fields; and the sentiment spreads that "we can only beat Hitler by becoming a 'total' State". (No one dares say "Nazi".)
Hitler, discerning in us a toleration of dissent, has driven hard into every crevice, trying to split us apart, like cannel coal. He has tried to turn dissent into disunion—and he has been helped by some of the most loyal and patriotic Americans almost as much as he has been helped by bundists.
We have not known how to deal with dissent; we stopped looking for the causes of disagreement; even when war came, we confused the areas of human action in which difference is vital with the areas in which difference is a mortal danger.