WAR UPON CHILDREN

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1940, Page 6

WAR UPON CHILDREN

Throughout the British Empire and in the United States the news of the Nazi wholesale murder of children has left public opinion torn between grief and wrath. How many children have lost their lives within the smoke and the flames of the London battlefront has not been revealed. It is known that the number of child victims is large, and there have been insistent demands for speedier and even compulsory removal of children from the danger zones. In pursuance of the policy of saving children from the horrors of war 90 children, many of them from the poorer quarters of London, were on their way to Canada where they had been assured of a welcome. When 600 miles from land in a stormy sea the vessel on which they were travelling was torpedoed by a Nazi submarine without warning. The vessel sank within half an hour of being hit and 83 out of the 90 children aboard her lost their lives. * # * # It is difficult to understand how such wanton cruelty can be held to further the German hopes of conquest. The slaughter of young children may gratify the Nazi lust for violence and bloodshed which a month or two ago found satisfaction in the systematic slaughter of refugees in France and in Belgium. But the brutality will not stampede public opinion in Great Britain into belief in the invincibility of the Nazi fighting machine. The slaughter of children will arouse anger as well as horror and the determination to rid civilisation of Nazi barbarity will be all the stronger for this latest and most dramatic instance of the savagery to which dictatorships will revert in the hope of maintaining their domination of weaker peoples. To sink a passenger ship without warning was the first achievement of the German riavy in the present war. The sinking of that vessel did more than anything else to swing public opinion in the western hemisphere towards Britain and her allies. As a mere matter of tactics it would have seemed probable that even a Hitler would refraifi from a repetition of naval operations that had brought an angry remonstrance from the United States xand her prompt decision , to render much needed assistance to Great Britain.

* # # * If Herr Hitler is of the opinion that last week's tragedy will curtail Britain's programme for protecting her children he will have a rude awakening. The result will be even larger migrations of children from Britain to the Dominions coupled with redoubled vigilance on the part of the Royal Navy to ensure a safe journey across the seas. Every Dominion is prepared to receive and nurture children who are seeking safety from enemy violence, and despite the tragedy of last week public opinion in Great Britain is certain to insist that a way of escape shall be found. No form of barbarism so far employed by the Nazi leaders has proved effective in "breaking the morale of the British people. Even the children who lost their lives last week showed the courage of their race, and the ghastly tragedy was relieved to some extent by the gallantry shown by the crew and the adult passengers in their efforts to save the lives of the children. There are many deeds that will blot the record of the Nazi movement when it comes to the bar of history for judgmbnt among other political systems that have had their day but could not endure. Such deeds are almost inevitable in a system of government founded upon fear and upheld by brutality. Of all of those deeds the wholesale murder of children is one of the foulest — and most futile.