HITLERISM'S DANGER

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 344, 4 October 1932, Page 3

HITLERISM'S DANGER

SYDNEY PROFESSOR SPEAKS ON GERMANY'S NEW DICTATORSHIP. * Professor S. H. Roberts, professor of History at Sydney University, in ad address on "Dictatorship," said ■ that he could see no reason against the restoration of the monarchy. In no other eountry were the events of the past 15 years more important for the world in general than those that had taken place in Germany. No other eountry had known such a degree of bitter despair; none had had more social upheavals; and none had tried such a bewildering variety of experiments in seeking a way out of the abyss. Out of the ruins had arisen two rival forms of dictatorship which now strove for mastery in Germany in one of the most important fights the world had seen— the long duel hetween the forces represented hy Hitler and Herr Franz von Papen, the present Chancellor. Hitler, said Professor Roberts, rose on the scum of universal discontent and appealed to the lowest feelings of racial, national and religious bias, relying on the despair of his listeners ; and his own sonorous voice. The Fede— ral elections of July 31 proved that Hitierism, despite all the suffering and distress in Germany, did not command the support of. 40 per cent. of the German people, and there was every indication that Germany was more and more realising the negative eharacter of Hitler's proposals, particularly as compared with the deeds of the Hindenburg-von Papen dictatorship, which at present ruled Germany with an iron hand. — When all was said and done, it was realised that as an administrator, Hitler was untried, and that it would be ^ hazardous to place the affairs of 60,000,000 people in the hands of such a demagogue, to whom compromise and fairness were so alien. Hitler was the expression of an emotional effervescence, and the danger was not so much that he would get a majority in elections, as that his storm troops would force a coup d'etat .and seize power hy armed rebellion which', even if not successful, would plunge Germany into civil war. Hitler might he a weakling, a demagogue, and a maglaminiac, but none the less world peace depended on his failure.