But is it not also the "Herod mentality" that in all too high a degree compromises itself in the protest whose poisonous and reeking flames of smoke strike out against every little kindness towards all the unfortunates who today, because of their destiny and the great drama's breakers are, as refugees, washed up on the otherwise sunny shores of the "victors"? It is true that these unfortunates belong to the people who would appoint themselves as a "master race" over all the world's states or collected humanity, though they are now maimed, tied and bound. Their large factories for the creation of munitions and perhaps even their other industrial plants are removed and transferred to the victors' areas, just as certain areas of large estates, whose owners particularly bred militarism and took pride in raising militaristic cadets and considered any officer's title as the only guarantee of honour, culture and good breeding, are parcelled out. At the same time an extraordinarily large percentage of their urban residential houses are only heaps of ruins and piles of ash and the surviving physically and mentally stunted population are one hundred per cent subjected to the victors' control. What state today need be afraid of these wrecked material and animal remnants or rags from the domain of a past culture? Does one believe that it will destroy future world culture if today one helps to make Christmas a little bit festive for the thousands upon thousands of young children in the refugee camps who can see the world through only the grace and mercy that a superior, hostile country sees fit to assign them? It is true that the said country can assign to these people without home and fatherland only so and so many calories of this and that sort when it comes to products for the maintenance of life and nutrition, but it is absolutely not necessary that, at the same time, one needs to ration mercy, not to mention sympathy or neighbourly love towards these beings in their misfortune, humiliation or Gethsemane.
      It is true that the population and leaders of these people showed no mercy or kindness towards those they forced under their domination, but does this make the rest of us take them as an example and go and do likewise? In this case these beings, these "leaders" and "dictators", have been totally victorious, indeed in the midst of their defeat, suicide and downfall. What good is it that the victory over these said beings represents their dead bodies, their destroyed cities, industries and war-related skills, when their nature and thinking are released unscathed into the victors' consciousness and there provide fertile soil and opportunities for development? Would not these leaders' promises, that their methods will be resurrected in their country's ruins and again make their people the leading "master race" in the world, come true and become a real fact? What kind of mentality is it that brings about a protest against a little kindness towards the thousands of small children who as yet have seen the world almost solely as a prison with armed guards and barbed wire cordons? Who is going to tell these children about what lies outside these cordons? Indeed, are there others than the oldest or adults, who are also prisoners of the same camps, to do this? But about what and whom should these adult fellow prisoners tell the children? Outside is entirely the victors' domain alone. And the children's questions must of course in the first instance be about the world they see through the fence's random cracks, the meshes of the wire fences and the spaces between the armed guards. And what then is told these thousands and thousands of small inquisitive beings? Indeed, it can simply be only the story of a "Herod" or a "Christ". If the winner (that of the allied states in whose care the refugee camp in question is placed) shows no mercy, understanding and forgiveness, he must for these little beings be portrayed as an ugly and people-hating "Herod" who is plotting only revenge, punishment or retribution and oppression of his fellow human beings in order to maintain his reputation as the true "king", which in this case means "conqueror" or "ruler". Only those beings who rush in where angels fear to tread can believe that good and free "democratic" citizens can be created from this youth with this story or such information material relating to the mysterious world beyond the barbed wire.
      But how shall these parents or adult fellow prisoners say anything else to the children if it really is a "Herod" that rules? That this "Herod" calls itself a democratic society or asserts its authority by a different tone of the sound of Christ means nothing if there is no forgiveness or understanding and therefore no mercy either, but on the contrary there is simply only a fervent desire to return evil with evil. That the said "Herod" is a democratic society of such a nature is almost worse because this society then consists of not one but many "Herod beings".