RINGING DOWN THE CURTAIN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 67, 24 April 1945, Page 4

RINGING DOWN THE CURTAIN

ONLY by the tener of the pitiful broadcast statements now pouring from the official German radio, can we formulate any conception of the Nazi reaction to the final stages of the war which are now being enacted on the outskirts of Berlin, the German capital and common goal of the victorious invading armies. By comparison they are in stark contrast with the boastful 'The Third Reich shall last for one thousand years" given out by Goebbels in' 1939, or the blatant vanity which characterised the invitation of Marshal Goering to the neutral press 'to witness the event of the ages—the invasion of Britain' in 1940. Today the appeal is to the poor duped common people of Germany who reared and maintained a despot. The speakers themselves cannot disguise either by word or voice the utter hopelessness and futility they feel in coercing the fallen people to fight on and on. Behind their pleas and their dire, threats are the stream of fanatical commands pouring from the war quarters of the mad Fuehrer, who todav witnesses the collapse of the vast structure of powetf and aggrandisment which he has built up on th£ suffering of others. Today like the tyrants of' Persia and of Rome he beholds their complete destruction at the. hands of free men. We cannot hope for an armistice until this maniac whom Germany has raised to power is either eliminated or overpowered by the saner elements of his associates.