HITLER'S LATEST PRONOUNCEMENT.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 14, 1 February 1937, Page 6

HITLER'S LATEST PRONOUNCEMENT.

Der Fuhrer has delivered liis much heralded speech to his people and it has been received by them with the full acceptance and acclaim that at home invariably greet his utterances. With the earlier part of his address on Germany's recovery of her full national status we need not concern ourselves very much. It was no doubt mainly intended for domestic consumption and cari scarcely be termed altogether bombastic, seeing that there is a very great deal of truth behind the boasts he makes. While it might well have been couched in less irritating and provoca,tive language, it has to be taken as the kind of stuff with which every dictator must attempt to feed a people suffering not a littfle privation as a result of the sacrifices he demands from them. Herr Hitler claims to have* ef f ected a "bloodless revolution," a claim that is far from being altogether true, while There can be no question as to its completeness having depended in very large measure on mi'litary coercion not unmixed with a good deal of terrorism* At the same. time, however, it must be recognised that Hitler rule is entirely accept,tble to the very gerat majority of- Germany's sixty-odd million people, closely organised and equipped for war. It is with that preliminary fact their dictator is obviously bent on impressing the world before he begins to talk to it about his solicitude for international peace. As to how this is to be preserved, however, he still confines himself very much to the same rather vague generalisations which he put forward last March after resuming military occupation of the Rhineland zone in breach of the, Locarno Treaty into which Germany had quite voiuntarily entered. At that time he submited a seven-point proposal which was considerably more pacific in its tone than the eight-point submission now advanced. In many respects, however, it was indefinite and Great Britain then laid before him a lengthy questionnaire asking that conditions of cooperation should be more particularly specified so as to af f ord a clear ground on which discussions and negotiations might proceed. At first he merely wanted time in which to consider these enquiries, but, though more than once pressed for an answer, none was given. What has happened in the interval has emboldened him to say now that he does not see any need to reply to them at afll — surely a rather contemptuous way in which to treat a diplonr.atic communication from another Great Power. N-or does he make any attempt to disguise his reasons for adopting this attitude* It is because, as he says, in the meantime he has greatly streilgthened his position by arriving at understandings, "consolidating" he calls it, with Ibaly, Austria, Poland and Japan. It is, of course, by the virtual military alliance with his fetllow dictator, Signor Mussolini, also having strong armed forces at his back, that he is mainly actuated. As for any thought of comlng to any agreement for the limitation of armaments Herr Hitler would seem now to finally dismiss it. He says, in effect, that Germany must and , will reserve to herself the right to arm- to whatever extent she may think best, leaving o'ther nations to follow the same course. Nor is there now any repetition of his suggestion of last March that the Locarno Pact of non-aggression and mutual assistance among Western European Powers should be revived in some modified form. Feeling his position so greatly strengthened, that idea would a.ppear to be entirely discarded, while eternal hostility is again sworn towards Soviet Russia, with whom France has a pact of mutual assistance. How tfll this can be reconciled with the professed desire to establish friendly relations with both Britain and France it is, on the face of our necessarily abbreviated summary of the speech, a little bit difficult to see. However, it is said from London that Sunday papers, headed by the "Observer," "welcome Hitler 's modera,tion«" On this point further comment from more impartial sources may be expected, possibly during the day." In the meantime it is strange to note how much the nations of the earth are now hanging on the words of a once humble Austrian house-painter.