Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1939. A MAN WHO CANNOT BE BELIEVED.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 February 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1939. A MAN WHO CANNOT BE BELIEVED.

"WITHIN the last week or two, the Federal Prime Minister

(Air J. A. Lyons) and some Australian and New Zealand newspapers, not to speak of Earl Winterton, have rebuked Mr 11. G. "Wells for saying that he regarded Herr Hitler as a certifiable lunatic. It, would be interesting to have the candid opinions of these defenders of good manners on the Fuhrer’s latest speech—his oration at the opening of the Greater German Reichstag, in which he doubled Nazi Germany, so to speak, in the parts of the demon of Avar and the dove of peace. In the absence of the full measure of enlightenment which Mr Lyons and Earl Winterton and the newspapers mentioned no doubt feel themselves able to afford, it may suffice to point out that it is impossible for any rational human being to believe a, word of the more important passages in the fantastic jumble of assertions and denials which Herr Hitler discharged at his audience in the Kroll Opera House and to the world beyond.

Whatever else Herr Hitler may be, he is certainly not a man of his word. Addressing the Reichstag on May 21, 1935, for instance, he said:—

Gei'many neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria or to conclude an Anschluss.

All the world knows what has happened since and how impossible it therefore has become to believe, anything that Herr Hitler may say about. Austria or on any other subject.

One of the Fuhrer’s declarations in his speech on Monday last was:—

We do not desire to export our system. It is our patent. We certainly have no intention of attacking anyone or imposing our regime on China, South America, Holland, or Australia, but that is what the Western Powers predict. Perhaps they think we will next occupy the moon.

Just, how far Herr Hitler is sincere in this denial of aggressive intent may be seen clearly, not only in. the current policy of Nazi Gei'many in Spain, and in Czechoslovakia, in the extending tentacles of her intrigue through intervening countries towards the Ukraine and in various other directions, but in numerous passages of the Fuhrer’s own book “Mein Kampf,” which is still published with its text unabridged in Germany, though its more revealing utterances are excised from editions published abroad. One passage in “Mein Kampf’’ reads:—

Whoever really desires the victory of pacifist thought must give his whole-hearted support to the German conquest of the world. For if the reverse were to come about, it might easily happen that the end of the Germans would be the end of the pacifists. Therefore we must be resolutely determined to make war in order to achieve peace. The pacifist-humanitarian idea may perhaps be quite good when the world has been conquered and subjected to the highest type of man, who would be made supreme ruler of the earth. There would then be no possibility that this idea could have a harmful influence, in so far as its practical applications would become rare and finally impossible. Therefore war first, and afterwards perhaps pacifism.

It is the man who thus proclaims that the Germans must attack and subjugate all others who now declares that: “We have no intention of attacking anyone.” If as a point of good manners we are not to call this man. mad, we are at least not called upon to sink to the level of imbecility that would be entailed in accepting his testimony as credible and sincere.

It is not necessary to turn to the pages of “Mein Kampf” for a refutation of any peaceful intention expressed by Herr Hiller in his latest speech. A full refutation of these professions may be found in other passages of the same speech—in his assurances that Germany will support Italy and Japan and in his preposterous assertions that dangers of world war are occasioned by “Jewish war-mongers” and by the Press of those nations, including the United States, in which liberty still rules.

Even by a large proportion of the people of Germany, it may be hoped, there will be'a full appreciation of the extravagant absurdity of the Fnlirer’s reference to “the sincere desire ol lhe democratic nations to smash Nazi Germany.” In all lhe democratic nations there is a sincere desire for peace and to see Germany laking her rightful place in the march of civilised progress. That desire of necessity connotes a hope that Germany sooner or later will cast oil the oppression and nightmare of the Nazi tyranny, but that act of liberation and regeneration must be accomplished by the German people for themselves.

Meantime there is about as much hope of arriving at understanding and agreement with Herr Hitler and with his associates in Germany and in other totalitarian States as lhere is ,of reaching a similar compact with the untamed beasts of lhe jungle. It is upon the strength of the democracies, and upon the impossibility of completely quenching and destroying the spirit ol liberty by even lhe most elaborately organised tyranny and regimental ion, that hopes of a better future for the world must. rest.