Today is the first anniversary of the founding of what is undoubtedly one of the most important Nazi instruments of government, the Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. Under the direction of the astute Dr. Goebbels it has become the most successful molder of the public mind ever seen. Every possible outlet of opinion, journalistic, dramatic, musical, and artistic is subjected to the closest supervision, and any note of dissent is rigidly suppressed.

The remarkable success of the Ministry is attributable not so much in may opinion to its rigidity and completeness, as is generally supposed, as to the very simple and elemental fact that just now Herr Hitler's government enjoys a unanimity of support that has never before been given to any German government. This support is based on the pathological condition of the German people, on a state of mind induced by post-war defeatism which was particularly strong in the disillusioned youth of the Republic. Thus the public mind was in a peculiarly plastic form and the Nazis were able to mold it with the greatest ease and confidence.

So far there have been no hitches in their programme, because for a certain time people will live on promises and expectations. But the golden vistas held out by the Nazis that now hang in front of the German people with shimmering magnificence will certainly be dissipated by the passage of time and the necessary and inevitable failure of Hitler to make them into realities. I think that once faith in the success and truthfulness of the Nazi programme is undermined the Propaganda Ministry will function with just about as much force as it does in, say, France. There is no evidence to show that censorship is successful merely because it is thoroughly repressive. The Russia of Alexander III was certainly subjected to as stringent a repression as is modern Germany; yet in spite of this revolutionists were more active and numerous in Russia than anywhere else on the face of the globe.

If the propaganda of the Nazis depended for its success not upon force but upon cleverness and subtlety, one might predict that it would continue to enjoy its present prosperous state. The English, for example, are the most successful propagandists in the world and yet few people are aware of the existence of the large and persistent flood of English propaganda. But the Germans are not very clever about it; most of the German people must, in fact, be damned fools to swallow the tripe that is shoved at them. When the moment of awakening comes they will simply refuse to swallow any more; and then a process of revolutionary disgorging will commence which will create a highly precarious situation for Herr Adolph. The only way of avoiding this situation is to divert the minds of the people by war; and since war forms a cardinal point in the foreign policy of Hitler, it may be assumed that he will not neglect to employ it as a means of relieving pressure at home. The Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, then, emerges as a potent cause for future war, and thus becomes a threatening and significant problem of far more than internal German interest.