It has been generally agreed that Reichs-Chancellor Hitler's manipulation of foreign opinion has lacked something of subtlety and fact; but it was thought that in domestic matters at any rate, the man possessed a moderate amount of political common sense. And now even this last tender illusion seems in a fair way of being roughly uprooted. Speaking at the inaugural of the Berlin automobile show, the Chancellor, to all intents and purposes, promised the German people that the nation would soon have as cheap cars as the inhabitants of the United States can boast, and as large a percentage of car-owners to the whole population. Now while the immediate value of this as a demagogic gesture is patent, ultimately such a pledge, amplified and stressed as it has been throughout the country, will be measured by its fulfillment. And there can be little doubt that any such program is economically impossible within the framework of an unsubsidized German capitalist system. Either the state can take over the automobile industry and incur the tremendous losses which this attempt at vastly cheaper production would entail, or Hitler will have to recant.

Neither alternative can be at all attractive to the Chancellor; choosing the first will call down upon him the wrath of the industrialists who backed him as a safe bet to preserve their property; and it will moreover so burden the state's budget that it may force a cut in other expenditures dear to a demagogue's heart. The second choice will involve an admission, tacit or articulate, that he cannot accomplish what he set out to do, not even within a reasonable distance of success. I have no doubt that this bit of brazenness on Hitler's part will result in his having his paddles slapped by the automobile, steel, and coal industries, for such threats to one of them are threats to all, and not to be tolerated. It should not be long before Hitler realizes, as Mussolini before him, that it is less expensive to play in with the frock-coated captains of business and finance than carelessly to aggravate them.