In Berlin, at the end of April 1945, the signs of decomposition were unmistakable. I was not the only one in our quiet suburban street who had been hiding for weeks in a kind of voluntary house arrest. Next door, a young man who had been on the way to his army unit, had extended his visit to relatives indefinitely to await the end. Now, things were changing. Across the road, SS officers no longer went in and out of the home of the pretty widow and her two daughters; soon their bedsheets would be hung outside their windows to indicate surrender to officers of the occupation forces. Others were less adaptable. The retired military man a little further up the road was loading his gun in order to kill first his wife, then himself because the couple could not bear the moment of national shame. Elsewhere, shots were fired more arbitrarily. A young fanatic wounded a fellow Hitler Youth leader who had dared suggest that Hitler had led Germany into dis- aster. Was the Ftihrer still alive? Suddenly, it became clear that there was no authority left, none at all.

Rumours started flying. The army stores in the nearby wood had been deserted! Could it be true? The young man next door and I went to see, found the stores without any sign of guards or occupants, grabbed a tray with some 50 pounds of fresh meat and carried it home where my mother proceeded to boil it in the washtub in the basement. The shops around the nearby subway station had been left by their owners! When I got there, dozens, perhaps hundreds of people were dismantling counters and shelves; what goods there had been, had already been taken. The only exception was the bookshop, where connoisseurs were selecting what they wanted. I still have the five slim volumes of romantic poetry which I acquired on that occasion. Acquired? Everyone carried bags and suitcases full of stolen things home. Stolen? Perhaps, taken is more correct, because even the word, stealing, seemed to have lost its meaning.

Again, one might construct a scale of intensity and violence. One would then discover that the two ends of the spectrum are not very far from each other. Whereas civil war and revolution tear the fabric of the social contract apart, suicide and crime punch holes in it until in the end it cannot hold any more. Either way, in leaps and bounds or by stealth, we find ourselves on a road to Anomia. It is pointless to wonder which of these routes is worse. The former, class struggle right unto the edge of civil war and rev- olution, was the European social problem of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, beginning a little earlier in Britain and spilling over into our own century almost everywhere. The latter, the dissipa- tion of law and order by impunity and the resulting disorder and uncertainty, is the social problem of our own time, and may well continue to be that for many decades to come. It needs to be understood before it can be contained, although it also needs to be con- tained unless we want to suffer the miseries of Ano- mia. Man's unsociable sociability is the key both to understanding and to containing the problem of law and order.

Thanks and regards,

Jessey

Managing Editor

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