NATIONAL MARXISTS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 145, 10 April 1940, Page 6

NATIONAL MARXISTS

COMMUNISM AS WEAPON THE ADAPTABLE GERMANS Recently the German radio was heard to make an appeal for democracy. It concerned the Communist deputies,, deprived of their seats in the French Chamber, and must have provided some widespread amusement. Communists, said the broadcaster, form a party whose voice should be heard in the councils of the State: to suppress their activities is to work dismally against democracy. This new turn of the propaganda wheel of Dr. Goebioels, of course (like the defence of Russia's attack on Finland by the Stalinists) proceeds on the assumption that people have no memories. Quite apart from the denunciations of Communists as "the scum of the earth" and "the paid assassins of Moscow/' cries which persisted as long as there was anything to be gained from them. Hitler has made a special point of attacking Communist influence in Fiance. He justified his reoccupation of the Rhineland by the existence of this "Marxist clique'" across the Rhine. If a map of Europe could be prepared showing the tone of German propaganda it would be curiously chequered.. In Scandinavia it would show the Goebbels men dwelling -intensely on "the Bolshevist menace." which can be averted only by coming to. terms with the Reich. In Britain and France they would be revealed as distinctly Red, if not pro-Communist. In Spain, again, propaganda is •nti-Communi.st, though Germans there arc reported to have been subsidising Communist elements., simply to create mischief. In the Balkans it is also mainly anti-Commun-ist, though it varies in colour in Yugoslavia.