Dorothy Thompson

Spokesman-Review/September 4, 1939

A friend remarked whimsically the other day: “If this situation finally results in a major war, the result will be that afterward there will be virtually no governments at all. The man-in-the-street will be absolutely convinced that he has more sense than any government. All officials will be regarded as the lowest form of human life, decisions will probably be taken by Gallup polls, and disrespect for the state will be universal.”

My friend, who is not a follower of Henry Thoreau, did not think this condition of affairs desirable. He believes in government, he rightly thinks such a condition would be anarchy.

But certainly the so-called “common people,” meaning people, are beginning at last to think again about the long-neglected question which is at the root of all government—namely, the question of the nature and distribution of power.

Certainly they do not phrase the issue in such terms. They are not political philosophers. But they observe that the world is on the verge of embarking upon something that nobody wants to do, for no purpose that can possibly be justified.

They observe that, by reason of a course of events that everybody has been watching and conscious of and few people are worrying much about, the decision over the life and death of millions of people, the decision of whether the buildings they have built shall continue to stand, of whether the wealth they have produced shall be used to make human life more comfortable, beautiful and secure, or used for an orgy of universal destruction—this decision, Godlike or Satanic in its naked power, rests in the hands of one man.

The question is asked: “Will Hitler conquer the world?”

The answer is: He is already master of the world.

He already has the power of life and death not only over the Germans, but over Czechs, and Poles, and Hungarians, and South Slavs, and Englishmen, and Frenchmen, and Italians.

More remotely, his power stretches over the personal lives of every one on this globe. The economic life of every nation is affected. The last farmer and mechanic in Idaho or Indiana pays tribute from his work to contribute a bolt or a cog to another tank or another bomber-because of The Man.

Humanity waits for its doom or its release while The Man communes with himself and his cohorts. We read that he is not feeling very well and perhaps may take a long rest—and our spirits rise.

We read that he is in splendid form—and our spirits sink.

The journalists, publicists, diplomats of the whole world concentrate their energies on nothing else whatsoever except reporting and responding to the moods, the whims of one man.

Communication with him is impossible in any language. Words have lost their meaning. The British and Polish governments use the words “negotiate” and “mediate.” The words in Nazi mean “capitulate,” and The Man is willing to accept the capitulation. The acceptance of capitulation is called compromise in Nazi.

Since words do not communicate any meaning, the world resorts to signals. Children are evacuated from British and French cities; streetlights are dimmed; the British stock exchange is closed; armies are mobilized; fleets are moved; millions of pounds of sterling are transferred. It is all a gigantic wig-wagging operation to get through to The Man an idea: There is still other power.

But what will that idea do to the Satanic-God who now is Power?

The totalitarianism of Power in one country moves inexorably to totality of all Power. The least retreat and the internal Power is challenged. The least weakening of the Man’s Power means destruction for the thousands who are the robot instruments of that Power—the hundreds of thousands of “Elite Guards,” “Storm Troopers,” “Block Watchers,” “Gestapo,” “civil servants.” None dares break away from the center of power, for if he breaks away he is broken in the moment.

In a quiet moment, one asks: How did this come about and who is to blame? Everybody.

All those who, because they believed and longed for some Utopia, followed some dream of perfection, forgot the first Commandment of the Decalogue.

The “liberals” and “progressives,” in all countries, who have concerned themselves with every other question except the question of Power.

The Conservatives, lovers of Power, who have failed to ask themselves how much Power is good for any corporation and in what direction will assaults on Power go? 

The Communists, who in their zeal for “equality” have concerned themselves with every question except the one of Power.

Where now is their great Comrade? The Oriental Despot whom they have so abjectly worshipped, calling the State which he absolutely and totally owns a “modern democracy?” A State which is a medieval serf kingdom led by the Inscrutable One who, in his Infinite Wisdom and Love for the People, can do no wrong.

Coldly, he who understands the nature of Power follows the inexorable necessity to Unite and Grab.

The Man was also, once, just a man. He is 50 years old; he has, no doubt, a malfunctioning of the pituitary gland, which has given him one great personal frustration. He has a prodigious imagination, undisciplined by a great artistic talent and uncontrolled by education. He is supremely ignorant.

All the power he has, accumulated to him. All the glamour he has was heaped upon him—the incorporation of the frustrations of others, the incorporation of the dreams of others. The way was always prepared for him. It was prepared by those who wanted “Universal Security,” “the breaking of the power of great corporations and the ending of Servitude to Interest,” the “ending of Unemployment”—the things we all want. But how? By what means? By what instruments of Power? That was always the issue.

To make a little better and more intelligent and just world requires infinite patience, labor, thought, character—the cooperation of all the numerous groups of society—society, which is organism and something different from the state, which is organization and coercion.

But, people thought, there must be a formula. There is a formula for everything—a serum for smallpox; an injection for diabetes; an alchemy for the transmutation of metals.

Someone had a social formula. “Let him try it.” “Give him a mandate!” Put all power into the hands of the state—“all power to the People’s Soviets!”—the Soviets being merely a system for passing power under rigid control from one instance to another until it finally lands totally in the hands of a single, an indestructible authority.

Or, even more nakedly, “All Power to the Peoples’ Fuehrer!”

That was the beginning.

What has concerned all the great political philosophers of all time; what concerned Moses, Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Mill, Montesquieu and Alexander Hamilton—the problem of Power, the problem of checks and balances of Power—this has ceased to concern our “intellectuals” for a generation now. Even in our universities, with a few exceptions, we have had no political philosophy. Instead, we have had “economics”—and the psychoanalysis of politics and politicians.

Our “political scientists” have been running after Utopias, hailing “blanket mandates,” charting “inexorable trends,” “running with the grain of history”—and steering us all, everywhere, toward the Total State, which mounts up step by step into the Total Power, uniquely incorporated. Not toward the Federation of Man but toward the Corporation of the World—with a president appointed for life, and unremovable.

What is happening now was bound to happen. 

It could not possibly be otherwise.