Ter Braak's Journal 1939
Appendix 7 1939 Ter Braak’s Journal 1939 The Hague, September 3 Day war is declared. For the first time in my life I feel the urge to keep a journal. Since Hitler’s blackmailing of Poland, style is the furthest thing from my mind. No desire to write even; typing is less “literary.” Mood for the past few days: changing by the hour. Fear, indifference, fury, shame. One feeling trumps them all: stay alive until Hitler hangs. This without the slightest feeling of revenge. I don’t hate that man. I don’t even despise him. But he has to go, and we can take it from there. Up to now, my one belief, however irrational: that this is going to happen, somehow. Once this belief is shattered, so is the last reason to go on living. Feeling of shame, especially about the last six years. As v. L. asserted: the cowardice of those who did not dare confront Hitler these past six years. Every other cowardice (fear of bombs, etc.), I deem forgivable and normal, but for this cowardice Europe will pay with blood. Utter lack of imagination on the part of the average person to grasp that a country can be led by criminals and psychopaths. The man in power is a “gentle- man”: old slave morality, the lower orders accept the ruler as a “gentleman,” even in the face of the vilest acts to the contrary. Radio: immediately prior to Chamberlain’s declaration of war that may well decide Europe’s fate for years to come, a woman speaks about canned vegetables; segment from an opera.
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