GOEBBELS “EXPOSES” THE ENGLISH

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 3, 4 January 1940, Page 4

GOEBBELS “EXPOSES” THE ENGLISH

Nazi Press & Radio Campaign

'pHE truth muit be known sooner or lat*r. Maybe it i 3 as well to dls•flooe now, before it is too late, what really goes on ha the heart of the Empire. Maybe Jt la as well that the big proportion of the Dominions’ people, who pride themselves on their English descent —English, mark you, not British—should have their eyes opened or (if they have known these things, and suppressed the knowledge) be exposed to its fellow citizens. Did you know that:— Opium is distributed by employers in the English textile industry to keep workers’ children quiet? Germans are spat upon in English streets? (a Palestine the English put out the eyes of Arabs before they execute rhey use native children as bait in crocodile shoots? High-born English aristocrats habitually steal jewellery at social gatherings? A dog in England is 100 times more valuable than a child? French officer- have assumed command of the British Army? And the English have called up cannibals to defend their Empire in New Guinea? That surprises you, doesn’t it? But It's all true. It must be true! It is the picture of England, which Dr Goebbels’s Ministry of Information has put before the German people tinee Munich through newspapers and radio, writes David Bailey in an article from London published in The Herald, Melbourne. It is redrawn for English eyes in a book, ' Beware of the English," compiled by Mr. W. G. Knop, and published by Hamlsh Hamilton. In the foreword, Commander Stephen King-Rail, who recently earned the contempt and anger of Dr. Goebbels by putting the English view before private German citizens through the Reich mails, says: "This book shows you England and the English as we are described to the Germans: and what makes the affair •o wickedly dangerous is that the average German—as decent a person as any other human being—has littlo or no opportunity of reading any other account of England and her people. “Persuaded that the vile and wicked English have, as one of their main purposes in life, the destruction of the German nation, the German who wants peace, will see in Great Britain the principal obstacle to his laudable ambition. . . . “The book is both a footnote to history and the writing on the wall of our times." Without comment the book quotes 80 Press articles and reproduces 120 illustrations from newspapers selected chiefly lor their national and regional importance. Chapter and verse are quoted for all extracts, so that the compiler’s claim to give a fair cross-section of the impression of English life and policy, as conveyed to German readers during the last nine months, is reasonably justified. Studying in this concentrated form the German presentation of England, two main trends become obvious. The attack is first on the morality (using the word in a rather special sense), and second on the morale of the English. To the discredit of English morality is the opium story. It comes from the Voelkischer Beobachter of February 4, 1939. Criticising the English “newspapers and bishops who cannot do too much to expose.the ‘atrocities* to which the ■poor Jews’ are subjected," the newspaper draws the attention of these gentlemen to conditions in the English textile Industry, in which opium is specially distributed by the management to female hands to keep their children quiet, so that they may work undisturbed for the profit of John Bull" And this from B.Z. am Mittag of December If—

“Two disclosures have been made recently in the British House of Commons. First, an M.P. stated that *in England a dog ia regarded as 100 times as valuable as a child.’ "Second, it was revealed that in England the only land of really genuine ‘humanity,’ the buying and selling of children has been developed into a regular industry. There are proper companies which trade in children, whose prices are listed up to £SOO or £6OO. "Yesterday it was decided in the House that these companies should in future be not forbidden, but registered; and in that way England’s conscience would be once more set at rest. In other countries children are regarded as the nation's most valued possessions. In England, that land of prosperity and ‘humanity,* they are the object of sordid transactions of doubtful limited companies, and have price tickets attached.” And again, the Lambeth Walk (a harmless enough dance, In my degenerate view), brings this from Der S. A. Mann on January 6:— *'We will not cast up in reproach its murky origin from the slums of London and other harbour districts, even though this dance has already claimed the sacrifice of human lives. “In Brighton a 52-year-old waiter tell dead from heart failure while doing the Lambeth Walk . . . With the frenzied cry of ‘Oi’ on his lips . . . he left this world for the eternal dancing ground. ... A degenerate dance?—No, a degenerate people . . even high-class hotels have opened their revolving doors to this disgusting bit of Jewish apery.” British weakness and effeminacy, British unwillingness to fight, is stressed over and over again in passages as this:— “Lack of unity within the Commonwealth in event of war would inevitably lead to the final break-up of tho whole Empire and the downfall of Britain.” And this:— “What does it matter if English women hurl themselves into uniforms . . we know that women only become manly where men are effeminate. Small wonder that women take |to barrack squares when, the same ’ men who talk so loud about preventive war . . . prefer to lead comfortable lives as heroes of fashion and rivals of film stars in the true tradition of thrice-holy English comfort.” Mr. Eden, the Berliner Borsen-Zei-tung surprisingly revealed on January 23, was then contemplating a tour of Ireland to invite the Irish revolutionaries to join his opposition group against the Prime Minister. Formation of the British Ministry of Information, announced by the “12 Uhr Blatt” on June 27 under the heading “Impertinent British Lies and Our Reply” roused the paper to comment:— “• • • there is no doubt that from the very first day this Ministry of Propaganda was at work British lies have grown much greater and much more vicious than ever before. The position is now clear to us. “This Ministry was conjured up not for the purpose of spreading the truth, but to conceal it. The British Minister of Propaganda is nothing but an instrument of obscurantism, which is used alternately against foreign countries and, with equal severity, against the British people themselves. “Its sole aim is to prevent the people from realising how misguided British policy is and how insignificant the power of the British Empire has become.” Almost the whole of that definition would be accepted by the English—as applicable to the Reich Ministry of Information. Are both nations, then, merely grimacing in a mirror?