The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1940. STILL DEFIANT.

Evening Star, Issue 23693, 28 September 1940, Page 10

The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1940. STILL DEFIANT.

In the shortest time Germany struck down the smaller Powers that dared to resist her aggression. She lias not broken the spirit of any one of them. In every one of the countries Nazism has trampled down it is easy to hear chanted by hundreds of thousands the song that Kipling imagined for the Piets of Scotland, foiled by, but always threatening, the great Wall.

We are the Little Folk—we! Too little to love or to hate. Leave us alone and you’ll see How we can drag down the Great! We are the worm in the wood 1 We are the rot at the rootl We are the germ in the blood! We are the thorn in the foot!

The Czechs, who have an army of perhaps no more than a division in England, have boasted reasonably of the service they are performing for the Allies in detaining an army of 300,000 Germans, required to keep order in their own down-stricken but still far from passive country. Direct injuries they can inflict on the enemy do not amount to more than annoyance, but they would quickly be more than that if the forces, which Germany will need some day for her own defence, were withdrawn. Control if as difficult to maintain in Norway, where it was gained with the aid of traitors and confirmed when the invaders’ nearer bases, together with command of Norwegian aerodromes, compelled Great Britain to evacuate her forces. A few days ago it was reported that several Norwegians had been arrested for sabotaging foodstuffs, especially fish, for Germany, and that organised resistance to the Nazis’ army of occupation was progressing in various districts. Along with its military repression, an artful plan has been pursued bv Berlin for subverting the free institutions of the country and reducing it, apart from war conditions, to a slavery like that of Germany itself, but that design has met with the least success. The Norwegian Storting, or Parliament, has a proud record' among liberal assemblies. It would obviously ease the Nazis’ task if they could reduce it to something as abject as the Reichstag. The infamous Major Quisling was entrusted with the mission of persuading Norse politicians how much happier their country would he if its Constitution were so degraded. They could have either a regime of which Quisling himself would he the head—after giving his name as a new word of contempt to half a dozen languages—or a wholly German administration. The politicians could only reply that they would not, of their own consent, have one or the other. Especially it was emphasised by them, according to reports ffotn Stockholm, that they would not dare to face their constituents if they voted against their King. So, according to a cable message published yesterday, the German Commissioner in Norway has had to report that there is no hope of bringing the Norwegian political parties into line with the German demands, and the Gormans have decreed their own solution of the impasse. The decree proclaims that the royal house of Norway is to be abolished and the royal family and the Norwegian Government in England to be permanently 'exiled. A Ger-man-controlled State Council of thirteen members is to be appointed, and all political parties to be dissolved. Political parties, said the German Commissioner, had hitherto prevented the people from learning the truth about German aims, and consistently worked for a pro-British viewpoint. The Norwegians and other small peoples were peculiarly blind to German aims before they were trampled down. There is no doubt that they know them now from bitter experience. King Haakon, who was chased by bombers from pillar to post before he sought refuge in England, can laugh at these, threats of the sub-men. His subjects will bide their time. To quote the Stockholm telegram, published in * The Times ’ a few weeks ago, “ the rank and file of Norwegians, especially since the delay in launching the blitzkrieg against Great Britain,/idealise that German power is not invincible and believe that the occupation of their country is not permanent, but is doomed to be short lived.” The Poles, who have military forces as well as airmen in Great Britain, and who also have to he held down by force in their own country, have the same conviction. Hitler’s empire of conquest, which rivals now Napoleon’s in its dimensions, will crash faster than Napoleon’s when it crashes.