Crime Does Not Pay
THE MOST STAGGERING PROBLEM in the educational world at present seems to be that of re-educating the youth of Germany. To be sure, millions of boys trained under the Nazi regime have been killed; but there are millions more who have grown to adolescence in an atmosphere wholly unlike that of most civilized countries and who have been imbued from their earliest consciousness with the ideas that Hitler has marketed with such fiery eloquence. One has to deal with youth indoctrinated with the notion that lying is the best policy, that ruthlessness is a god-given virtue, that criminal aggression is what pays, and that the bombastic (not the meek) shall inherit the earth.
Two such catastrophic demonstrations that crime does not pay would be enough for most people, but it is doubtful that they will be enough for people with the Teuton's psychologic squint. Beyond any doubt there will remain in Germany after the loss of this second war men totally unconvinced, and eager only to try again. There will also remain fertile soil in which to sow this baneful seed. Repression by force will be the sole available antidote for the Nazi poison for a time; and the grave question is whether or not Germany can be educated out of her devotion to the doctrine that one who dosen't steal candy from a child is a fool if he refrains when chance offers to steal the candy. Failure to get away with it twice is sure to inspire in German minds the belief, not that the theory is basically wrong, but that it is sound and will work if certain past mistakes can be avoided next time. What the Nazi idea reverts to is evolution in the natural world; and he cannot outgrow the belief that the same cruel code must be valid spiritually as well.
The roots of this evil are intellectual, and they have been carefully nourished in German youth. No small part of the world's task is to inspire in juvenile Germany a healthier conception of human conduct. Apparently one must take full account of the innate racial convictions, of the national psychology which has for so long unfitted so many Germans for world society, and attack the trouble at its source.
