LITTLE PRIVACY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20124, 19 December 1939, Page 7

LITTLE PRIVACY

NAZI RULE TO-DAY DEFENCE OR WARNING? LONDON, Dec. 5. The almost complete disappearance of privacy under Nazi rule is described in a remarkable article published in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, exerpts from which are featured in the “Germany Day-by-Day” column in The Times. The Times comments: “An article written with such skill could be interpretend either as a defence of Nazi methods or as a warning that such methods may go too far towards imitating Bolshevism.” The article asks where present Nazi tendencies are leading, and complains that the Germans are living amid a revolution of their social and economic life, which is felt “sometimes like the gradual movement of sand dunes and sometimes like the shock of an earthquake.”

“Crisis of Privacy”

The article states that in politics, in business, in law, and in culture there is “a crisis of privacy.” “The word ‘Private’ may still stand on the office door,” the article proceeds, “but the office door has to admit, firstly, the State’s financial representative, from whom nothing is concealed; secondly, an official from the Labour Exchange, who takes away the expert stall for war duties; thirdly, officials who bring endless questionnaires to be filled in; and, fourthly, a representative of the Labour Front, and the Nazi representative of i staff interests.”

The article also stales that, in fact, the German business man has become the “functionary of the community;” that “new society fiefs, and feudalism are growing up,” and that the business of the people is becoming public. Having admitted that the shrinkage of private life is not an evil, but a political necessity, and having included one or two orthodox Nazi phrases about the community and the inindividual, the writer of the article is content to point out that the place of the individual in the community is one of the things which must be settled when the war is over.