It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blacked's unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf, published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious 'intention of the translator's preface and notes is to tone down the book's ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. Both Left and Right concurred in the very shallow notion that National Socialism was merely a version of Conservatism.

Then suddenly it turned out that Hitler was not respectable after all. As one result of this, Hurst and Blackett's edition was reissued in a new jacket explaining that all profits would be devoted to the Red Cross. Nevertheless, simply on the internal evidence of Mein Kampf, it is difficult to believe that any real change has taken place in Hitler's aims and opinions. When one compares his utterances of a year or so agoVith those made fifteen years earlier, a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn't develop.