THE POT ASSAILS THE KETTLE

Barnes, Harry Elmer

The Pot Assails The Kettle By HARRY ELMER BARNES AT THIS TIME of the year I prefer to give all my spare time to the ancient and honorable pastime of hunting. But this Autumn I have varied and...

...he and his psychiatric "pluggers" would seem to be the ones who are actually suffering from at least mild and temporary paranoid delusions...
...Indeed, the German version was fathered by a Scotchman, Houston Stuart Chamberlain...
...Spain, 23...
...Even an imposing aura of psychiatric lore and jargon has been thrown about our American Vansittartism in the mueh touted book, fathered by Dr...
...Incidentally, the percentage of the Honorable Lord's Britain is 56, just exactly twice that of Germany...
...18, and Oct...
...J. C. Furnas...
...Pitrim Sorokin examines with painstaking thoroughness the relative participation of the chief European countries in waf from 1101 to 1925...
...And just imagine our Intellectual War Profiteers, the Fadimans, Stouts, Shirers, Browns, Commagers, Van Dorens, and the like, emulating Tolstoi and teaching "degenerate" Germans the sweet doctrines of humility, brotherly love, and turning the other cheek...
...Our anti-war intellectuals and educators are currently in the doghouse...
...Sweden, 9; Italy, 9; Netherlands, 8; Prussia, 8; and Denmark, 7." Let the Honorable Lord laugh this one off...
...Lord Vansittart has proclaimed his unalterable belief in the unmitigated depravity of all Germans in numerous speeches, articles, and interviews...
...I cannot here take the space to detail the well-nigh complete identity between the state of mind, mental attitudes, and general doctrines, of Vansittart and those of the more literate Nazis and other Fascist publicists...
...There is no denying that they are more annoying, at least some of them, in certain ways than other peoples...
...In fact, I did just this thing in the Saturday Review of Literature for Sept...
...91-93) by amply demonstrating it to be no more than an ignorant and malicious conspiracy against the truth...
...Winkler, an Hungarian emigre, assures us the Germans have conspired against the peace and well-being of Europe since the foundation of the Teutonic Order in the Medieval age...
...We have sprouted our own half-pint Vansittarts among our Intellectual War Profiteers, under the leadership of such rapidly flowering authorities on his-» tonography, anthropology, and international relations as Rex Stout and Kip Fadiman...
...Laski...
...If I had the space, it would be easy to expose the gross and naive errors of methodology and historical fact in this book, which render it as devoid of scientific pretensions and status as phrenology or palmistry...
...It is the underlying thesis of his Winning of the West...
...Harold Laski has done the job in extended and admirable fashion in the chapters in his Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, where he deals with the similarities between the counter-revolutionary Tory imperialist mentality in Britain and the mental outlook and doctrines of the Fascist ideologists...
...The equally projective character of Vansittart's volume will be apparent to all discerning and informed readers...
...Poland, 11...
...He concludes (p...
...Just who is going to educate this nation of villains into the ways of peace, humanity, goodwill, and cosmic altruism...
...335ff), Prof...
...With a gratifying flash of his old time spirit and integrity, Prof...
...Ill, pp...
...He has now gathered this material together in a volume called Lessons of My Life (Knopf, $3), a fearful and wonderful appeal to history, politics, philosophy, art, metaphysics, and religion to buttress his brusque thesis...
...is so devoid of any true psychiatric basis that it could be passed over without any notice at all, were it not for the fact that it is written by a physician, in his capacity as a physician and a specialist in neurology...
...Is Germany Incurable...
...Take its chief foundations—the theory that only the Germans believe in a master Aryan race, and that the Germans, especially the Prussians, have been in all the wars in Europe and have started most of them...
...Brickner's brand of Vansittartism is self-evident...
...Projection Psychosis The psychiatrists have devised a very useful term, known as Projection, to describe a common mental mechanism...
...and Mrs...
...Nor can much help be found in our own country...
...But I have been even more occupied with jousting in the Saturday Review of .Literature against the leaders of the group whom William Henry Chamberlin has so felicitously designated as our "Intellectual War Profiteers," marshaled and deployed for murderous assault by such erudite savants as the veteran detective-story virtuoso, Rex Stout...
...There may actually be some lingering realism and humor among either publishers or the artists who design book covers...
...It refers to the mental situation in which a person guilty of some act or train of thought relieves his own conscience by blaming others for the very actions or mental attitudes which he himself manifests...
...A 'Semi-Seditious' Position Surely not the Vansittarts, and their like, who have guided England in the past, who have given her twice as many war years as Germany, who have led her to participate in three times as many wars as Prussia, and who share most of the mental quirks of the Nazis...
...Goebbels, and the comparable charge of complete degeneracy and villainy levelled against the Germans by the Intellectual War Profiteers among the publicists of the United Nations...
...Austria, 19...
...His fellow countryman, the historian, F. J. C. Hearnshaw, has sought to show from European history that the Germans have kept the Western world in war and turmoil since the days when Arminius destroyed the legions of Augustus— an achievement which John Fiske once glorified as the first great date in American history...
...Hence, I welcome the suggestion of the Editor of The Progressive that I write a little essay on this all too prevalent mental malady of wartime in our day...
...The Record On Bellicosity Nobody ever espoused the notion more enthusiastically and arrogantly than did Theodore Roosevelt...
...and the best thing that could be said to them at present is to remind them of Christ's injunction: "Physician, heal thyself...
...Any historian who cares to look up the facts can quickly put to rest the core of Vansittartism, namely, the allegation of the unique and devilish bellicosity of the Germans...
...If the Gauleiters of the United Nations in the AM-GOT are ever turned loose on Germany for any prolonged period, the net result will probably be to produce a nation of Germans very like what Vansittart fantastically imagines them to be today...
...Richard Brickner of Columbia University and the Neurological Institute and ghosted, so I am told on the best authority, by Mr...
...In his monumental Social and Cultural Dynamics (Vol...
...9, 1943...
...Here I will rest content merely to quote the succinct appraisal of the book by the distinguished psychiatrist, Dr...
...352) that "Germany has had the smallest (28) and Spain the largest (67) per cent of years with war, the other countries occupying various positions between the two...
...But the Honorable Lord is by no means the only offender in this respect...
...France, 26...
...There are surely plenty of lessons in this book, but perhaps none of them is the lesson intended by the author, namely, that one cannot differentiate between the German people and their Nazi leaders—all are equally vicious...
...It has been "plugged" by a number of eminent but highly excited psychiatrists, notably some six of them, led by Lawson G. Lowery and David Levy, in the Saturday Review of Literatwre of July, 31, 1943...
...Conspiracy Against Truth I have already referred to Paul Winkler's The Thousand Year Conspiracy in The Progressive...
...But this Autumn I have varied and diversified my pleasures by excursions into the highly diverting field of constructive controversy...
...He cannot very well accuse either Sorokin or Wright of being on the Nazi payroll...
...Gregory Zilboorg, in a paragraph from his devastating review in The Bulletin of the History of Medicine, July, 1943: "The danger of this psychiatric sleight-of-hand cannot be overestimated...
...The most conspicuous example of Projection in the current war propaganda is the attribution of diabolism to the United Nations and their leaders by Dr...
...Uncle Joe Stalin's educators cannot very well be employed on this job, since Uncle Joe has himself sharply repudiated the whole Vansittart thesis...
...The absurd idea of a master race was first given general currency by a Frenchman, Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, and it has been avidly mouthed by eminent writers in all countries...
...The thesis of the Brickner opus is that the Germans are pathological victims of mass paranoia, manifesting itself in delusions of persecution and grandeur, extending even to a panting urge for literal world dominion...
...Readers of The Progressive are well aware of my amiable exchange with Norman Thomas and my intimate passage at arms with Max Eastman...
...Even more disconcerting to the thesis of Vansittart is the conclusion of Quincy Wright, in his voluminous A Study of War (Vol...
...But it is equally true that they have conspicuous, perhaps unique, virtues in other respects...
...It is also semi-seditious, in that it confuses our war aims and distracts attention from the real enemy of orderly civilization...
...Robert Gilbert Vansittart, former Permanent Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Great Britain...
...Germany has had no monopoly on this dogma...
...Even so gentle a soul as William Allen White was wallowing in the doctrine at the time of the Spanish-American War...
...This was all provoked by my innocent protest against the adamant assumption that every last German is a low scoundrel, fit only for the gallows or the lash...
...I, p. 221) : "Of the 278 wars involving European states during this period (1480-1940), the percentage of participation by the principal states was: England, 28...
...Rus-ia, 22...
...It is entitled Is Germany Incurable...
...It is obvious that this effort to saddle the blame for Germany's offenses in the last decade on the German people rather than upon the Nazis is an affront to intelligence and elementary historical fact...
...Sidney Bradshaw Fay buries this book in a slashing review in the October, 1943, American Historical Review (pp...
...But suppose that, for just a moment, we accept the preposterous Vansittart doctrine that all Germans, not merely the Nazis, are irresponsible knaves and can only be made fit for association with humans through a long process of military subjection and reeducation...
...Then we will, indeed, have something on our hands, especially if the Germans gratefully turn for relief to Uncle Joe...
...Turkey, 15...
...The Laskis might do a good job in such reeducation, but the Honorable Lord very probably esteems Herr Goebbels more highly than he does Prof...
...The upshot of it all is that the Germans, like all other peoples, are good, bad, and indifferent...
...It is highly reminiscent of the style and manner of Crosius' famous Seven Books of History Against the Pagans...
...To kick the props out from under Vansittartism is literally a pushover for any moderately informed historian and social scientist who retains even a modicum of mental equilibrium in these trying days...
...Swastikas On The Jacket The "projective" character of Dr...
...This particular Projection psychosis in our day has come to be known as "Vansittartism," as a result of the blasts against the Germans by the Rt...
...It is, perhaps, not without significance that the paper jacket on his book is very appropriately embellished with swastikas...

Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 48


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.