RIGHT-ABOUT TURN

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 20, 25 January 1938, Page 8

RIGHT-ABOUT TURN

Circumstances no doubt alter cases, and thus, perhaps, affect principles, but the complete reversal of the Nazi attitude towards the proper place of women recorded in a cable message seems rather startling. One of the most downright doctrines enunciated by the Nazis when they took charge in Germany was. that the duty of women in the Nazi system was the rearing of children and the care of the home. But that was when there were seven million unemployed and women were to be withdrawn from industry to make room for men, otherwise out of work. The policy of feverish re-armament and public works has now changed the situation, and the "Daily Telegraph's" Berlin correspondent reports an actual shortage of labour, and a convenient reversal of the major principle of the Nazis that woman's place is in the home and not in the factory. Instead, in these busy times, with Krupp's and other firms working to capacity, Herr, Grohe, the local Nazi leader at Cologne, is constrained to declare that "every wife not a mother would be1 welcomed as an_ industrial employee." Thus the whirligig of time and fortune plays havoc with hard-and-fast rules. It would be awkward in a democracy for a Government to make such a rightabout turn, for the critics would soon spring to arms. Not so in the totalitarian State. The dictator has only to say the word and the nation moves. This is emphasised by the latest Nazi list of the Ten Commandments, of which the first was given in the cable news yesterday: .

The, Fuhrer shall be thy model. Fidelity to him is thy holiest duty; his wish shall be thy command; his decisions shall be unquestioned.

Thus there is no reason to anticipate trouble; the women will answer the call one way as readily as the other.