The Vengeance of Rome

He was intrigued and wanted me to expand on my theme. It had been so long since I enjoyed the company of intelligent and sophisticated adults I felt almost grateful to him. I explained how Jesus had been a progressive, educated as a Greek and familiar with Greek thought. Mohammed, however, had been a conservative, creating his creed in direct opposition to Christ’s teachings. Indeed, his creed had been in reaction to Greek thinking. Christ had preached love and peace while Mohammed had preached war and aggression. Mohammed believed religious faith should be spread by the sword, whereas Christ believed in passive example. Mohammed had taken religion back to the Old Testament, to those same prejudices and dark practices of the Jews. I had no time for Zionism, but if the Jews required a homeland they should be allowed to make one on condition that they give up religion and practise only secular politics.

He found this a novel and amusing idea. ‘You are yourself, I take it, of a non-religious disposition.’

I had not yet re-embraced the Greek Church. I said I had a Catholic background with several churchmen in my family. In those years I breathed a different air. Many considered religion to be backward and old-fashioned, and in my love of science I was still inclined to a form of agnosticism.

He, too, had been raised a Catholic, he told me, but had been attracted to Lutheranism before turning to an uneasy form of scientific materialism. ‘These days we place all the faith we used to place in God into science and the arts.’

I agreed. I was not sure they were complete replacements, but who could doubt that the Old Testament was responsible for many of the world’s troubles.

Yet, he asked, I did not feel that about the New Testament?

‘It is the first modern manifesto! It set the tone for the next two millennia. Our present philosophical and political debates all revolve around it. Europeans and Americans are products of it, even if we have no religious faith at all.’

‘You believe our purer Christian notions are corrupted when they are brought in contact with Jewish and Moslem ideas?’

‘Many of our great philosophers have thought the same.’

‘Nietzsche would go further. As would young Heidegger. Religion is not, then, a mere crutch, a means of escaping the stark realities of life and death?’

‘I understand how we must have some reassurances, some sentimentality.’

‘Some hope? You think Messrs Hitler and Mussolini give us that?’

‘Indeed I do.’ I answered with perhaps exaggerated enthusiasm. I was no longer sure that Hitler’s vision had very much to offer me, but Mussolini remained my ideal. He had led the Italians for over a decade and showed every sign of leading them for another two or three at least. I kept the rest of my opinions to myself, not having the measure of my companion. Privately I came to believe Hitler’s vitality was neurotic. Mussolini’s was masculine, wholesome, natural. At that time I remained convinced he could still rebuild a new Roman Empire whose power would extend across Europe and the Middle East. One day he might even lay claim to the British Isles again, to the kingdoms of the Franks and the Goths. After June 1934 Nazism renounced its place in history. Mussolini had never turned on his own, never poisoned the roots of his cause. No doubt if Mussolini had not allied himself with Hitler, Italy would be again the greatest nation in Europe, perhaps the world. I had not yet completely formalised my ideas at that point. My gut feelings told me what my mind tells me now. Those last glimpses of Röhm as he went to his death, the knowledge of what had been done to Strasser and the others, had all educated my heart, teaching me to trust no one in Germany. Even this personable Prussian with his aristocratic manners could be a Nazi sympathiser. Until I was safely out of the country, I would keep my ideas to myself. Another lesson I had learned in prison.

Herr Stross, as he introduced himself, was himself somewhat circumspect about both the Chancellor and Il Duce. I suspected he was of a liberal, perhaps faintly socialist, persuasion. The present atmosphere in Munich could not be very appealing to him. At length he opened a day-old copy of Le Figaro and began to read. After a while, when the steward came to offer refreshments, I asked if I might borrow the paper. He passed it over with an apology for its age. He had received it from a friend in from Strassburg. He had discovered one could no longer buy most foreign papers in Munich. All part, he supposed, of the government’s attempt to stimulate German internal trade. ’German goods for German patriots, as they say.’ He smiled and ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of caramel cake. As the steward sliced the cake for him, he asked if I thought the new economic policies would save the country.

I had only read the VB, which, of course, was wholly behind the German Chancellor. Still cautious, I echoed the editorials I had read, evidently to my companion’s boredom. He found it hard to concentrate on my remarks.