LET us survey the technique and tactics Hitler has employed on
his temporarily successful course. How has it all been possible?
A nation almost unarmed, with millions unemployed, enmeshed
in a treaty system that left it almost unable to stir without the
risk of sanctions, has now, after barely six years, become the
mightiest military Power in Europe, with scarcely challenged
hegemony. It has torn up the treaties, and stands unassailable,
in the expectation of world empire and of a power growing to
an unsurpassable maximum. It is not an achievement anyone
can belittle; and the German would have least occasion of all for
quarreling with it, were it not coupled with very grave poten-
tialities.

The elements of victory have unquestionably been a firm
and tenacious will, enormous elasticity and alertness, undoubt-
ing enthusiasm, inventiveness in destruction, and a strength of
nerve that withstood every test longer than the opponents; a
gift of divination, an impulsiveness supplied at all times with
the power for immediate action, for sudden thrusts at enemy
positions; a readiness to seize on every slightest sign of weak-
ness and to see it approaching; an ungenerous persistency that
allowed no breathing-space and recognized no rules. And all
this would have failed of its great success if the opponents had

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