DARKEST HOURS OF HISTORY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 62, 8 June 1942, Page 2

DARKEST HOURS OF HISTORY

The Nazis who steal food from invaded nations, leaving masses of people te grapple with hunger, can findi plenty of precedent from darkest chapters of human history.

Standard technique of .conquerors in ancient times was to thoroughly pillage a land. A conqueror would (hen leave those inhabitants fortunate enough to escape with their lives, and not enslaved, to: shift for themselves until the next harvest. As recently reported, one Nazi broadcaster asked derisively: "Now, who in the world ever expected. a victor to provide his enemies or former enemies with food?" This echoes prevailing sentiments of Assyrian and other ancient blitzkriegers. hundreds of whose exploits; bear

out this viewpoint. Ancient peoples and conquering nations never recognised a responsibilitv of providing even a liKnimum of food for conquered nations. Typical o'f kings engaged in imperial conquest 3,000 years age- is j this beast of Assyrian T'lglath-Pcl-1 eser 1: "I conquered the land of Ivutmun.i in ifs length and breadth. Their booty, their goods, and their possessions I brought cut. 1 burned their cities with fire, 1 devastated., I destroyed.'' Assyrian King Assurnasirpal of ihe ninth century 8.C.. similarly went on record as to his tactics, adding: "All the men who had fled from before my arms came down and embraced, my feet, and 1 imposed enforced labour on them." Egyptian records of conquest show the same disregard for the immediate or more remote In Lure oi conquered nations. Egypt's greatest militarist monarch, Thulmose 'lIT, in the fifteenth century U.C. even ordered the lie Ids of the fertile Megiddo plain lo be harvested for the benefit of his troops.—Science Service.