If Adolf Hitler had what psychologists call a split personality he could scarcely present himself more differently than he actually does to Germans on the one hand and to foreigners on the other. When addressing his own people on domestic issues Orator Hitler is alternately brawling and sentimental, repetitious, diffuse, coarse and ever more amazingly repetitious. His anxious care is to "talk down" to the stupidest German lout who can possibly be listening. With the "Little Man" ever in mind, Realmleader Hitler, the "Apotheosis of the Little Man," hammers away coarsely, repeating his points over & over again for hours at a stretch until his more cultivated radio listeners are ready to scream.
Emotional and intuitive Little Adolf can also "talk up" to logical, cerebral Latins and to Britons whom he humbly delights to consider superior persons. Broadcasts by Orator Hitler on foreign policy are so comparatively smooth, so well-turned and of such reasonable length as to amaze many Germans and lead to rumors that some be-monocled old-school diplomat of the Wilhelmstrasse must write them. But Adolf Hitler confronted face to face by a foreigner is also different from Adolf Hitler overpowering a dazzled German. To Berlin last week, hastily summoned from Paris, hurried Paris-Midi's correspondent de luxe, M. Bertrand de Jouvenel, son of the late, great French Senator & Ambassador Henri de Jouvenel. In Paris the Chamber had just voted to ratify a Franco-Soviet military alliance (see p. 18). Herr Hitler did not want it to pass the French Senate and become binding as a possible check on Germany.
"Isn't It Logical?" As recorded by M. de Jouvenel and syndicated in the U. S. by Universal Service the interview opened thus :
"I know what you are thinking, Chancellor Adolf Hitler said, advancing, with a fresh smile on his face, across his huge office in the Wilhelmstrasse. You're saying to yourself: 'Hitler is going to make pacific declarations to me. But are they in good faith? Is he sincere?'
"Now, isn't that a childish interrogation? Instead of working out psychological puzzles, would not you be wiser to use the celebrated French logic and think it out? Isn't it obviously wiser for our two countries to get along together? Wouldn't it be ruinous for both to crash against each other on new battlefields? Isn't it logical that I would wish what is most advantageous for my country? And that which is most advantageous, isn't it obviously peace?
"I told the Chancellor we French had his own words of hostility toward France in his book, Mein Kampj, which the Germans regard as a sort of bible, and that he had never made the slightest rectification. Hitler pondered a moment, then placed his hand on my arm. He said: You wish me to correct my book, like an author preparing a new edition. I am not an author, but a political man. I am rectifying those statements daily in my foreign policy, which extends amicability towards France. If I succeed in achieving a Franco-German rapprochement, that would be a rectification worthy of being written in the great book of history."