RACIAL PURITY CRAZE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 233, 4 November 1940, Page 3

RACIAL PURITY CRAZE

NAZIDOM FOLLOWING ROME IT JUST WON'T WORK The decision that all members of the Nazi Partj r must establish their ancestry back to the year 1800 shows that the rulers of the Third Reich are pursuing their policy of racial purity Avith, if anything, increased zeal. For the time being another aspect of Nazi policy, the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire, seems to have fallen into the background, but this obscurity may be only temporary. In any case, it is interesting that the man AA'ho, before all others., has gained Avorkl fame through his knowledge of the antecedents of the Empire should have declared himself against the policy Avhicli is behind the Third Reich's latest racial decree. No book in secular literature is so indisputably first in its class as is Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." There is no agreement amongst those entitled to judge as to what is the greatest play or the greatest poem, or the greatest iiovel ever Avrittcn, ewen if the question be confined to the English language. But in the realm of classical history the. "Decline and Fall" has no rival anywhere. Gibbon's judgment on a point of history therefore carries Aveighl; and his judgment, goes against the German theory. For it was his opinion that it A\;as a policy similar to that of the Nazis that destroyedtwo of the great States of antiquity. "The narrow policy," he savs, "oi preserving without anv foreign mixture the pure blood of the ancient citizens had checked the fortune, and. hastened to ruin, of Athens and Sparta.". What Avas mistaken over' years ago may prove to be i ':u;!'i.y mistaken to-day.