LEVIATHAN

Mr. Hitler, who came to power in Germany as the leader of a political party professedly reactionary and illiberal, has discovered that the most omnipotent of dictators finds his action circumscribed by the enlightenment of a modern world. His Jewish policy fortified by the pragmatic sanction of a German majority, brought down upon his head an incredible volume of cant, hysterically intoned and accompanied by dark threats of boycott and ostracism. And Mr. Hitler, who is not unaware of the position of minorities in those countries which now scorn him most openly, must be pardoned if he displays a cynical unwillingness to beat his breast and chant "Peccavi."

Engels has given a most profound definition of the state as a "particular instrument of suppression." He was concerned, it is true, primarily with the warfare of classes whose division was on economic bases, but his judgment is obviously capable of racial interpretation also, and his definition clearly implies that the existence of the state is incompatible with the conciliation of that class warfare; an inference which he did not neglect to elaborate. Mr. Hitler's state is simply the instrument of suppression serving the ends of a reactionary and racially religious class. The Turkish government, which has summarily placed a hundred communists in jail, and the estimable chauvinists of Georgia, who have imprisoned an ardent youth for his possession of communist literature, serve with an efficiency equal to Mr. Hitler's the interests of the classes which enthroned them.

Under such conditions, Mr. Hitler is doing precisely no worse or no better than the heads of other states throughout the world. His conduct has been less suave, his intolerance more witless, but the principle which governs them exists in the same strength and energy everywhere. Persecuting Jews in Germany and threatening Jewish lawyers in Scottsboro are governmental functions differing only in degree. To ignore this elementary fact is to criticize Mr. Hitler with a crass myopia which can scarcely command attention or respect.