Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1939. THE ENSLAVEMENT OF GERMANY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 April 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1939. THE ENSLAVEMENT OF GERMANY.

T\ any survey- of the present, state of Germany it. becomes obvious that there is a. clear distinction, to be drawn between the Nazi Party and the German people. That, is a fact which has its important bearing on the future, but whether it has much bearing on the immediate future, short of soine such extraordinary change from existing circumstances as might be brought about, for example, by a European war, seems, extremely doubtful. Whether there is any prospect of internal conditions in Germany, and Germany’s external policy, being modified and brought nearer to acceptable human standards, within.a reasonable time, by methods short of war, is a question at present of great and absorbing interest. That the Nazi regime sooner or later will/ collapse or be overthrown no doubt is to be taken for granted. It is a regime based on nothing that can be called by the name of principle. The one dear .note sounded by its leaders is that of a reversion to barbarism and unless the whole world is to revert to barbarism there can be no other ultimate fate than extinction for the elaborately organised gangsterdom of the Nazis. As a gangster system, however, Nazism is highly efficient and it seems only too possible that it may yet do an infinite amount of harm before its course is run. In a passage of his Pan-American Day address, President Roosevelt said: — The truest defence of peace in our hemisphere must always lie in the hope that our sister nations beyond the seas will break the bonds of ideas which constrain them towards perpetual warfare Well-informed observers agree in stating, however, that the. German people are far from being roused to the pitch at which they would break for themselves the bonds in which they are enclosed. The Nazi official assumption that Herr Hitler has the universal support of the German people is demonstrably false. Besides having been deprived of political freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of the Press, the people of the Reich are constantly coerced and intimidated by the secret police and other Nazi organisations. How many Germans have been consigned to concentration camps for venturing to differ from the ruling regime does not appear to be known, but the number certainly is very large. Some of the leading facts of conditions now ruling in Germany were summed up recently by an American journalist, Mr Harold Callender, in a series of articles in the “New York Times.” The articles recorded Mr Callender’s observations during an extended tour of Germany after the November riots —the anti-Jewish pogrom. Official spies have successfully given the impression that they are practically übiquitous (Mr - Callender wrote), and the Germans who have ideas of their own habitually speak in whispers and avoid the telephone, save for routine communications. Yet one finds plenty of evidence in all classes of acute apprehension as to where the country is being led, and hope is repeatedly expressed that foreign powers will yet check Nazi “dynamism.” Remarking that the Nazis, however, reveal an increasing sense of power, of ability to defy the world, Mr Callender adds: — But the victorious mood is tempered by an awareness of the doubts, misgivings and discontent within Germany and of the growing mistrust abroad. The regime feels fully able to squelch malcontents at home and able for the present to ignore foreign opposition. But it suspects that this may not always be the case. Mr Callender found that all over Germany and even in the Nazi ranks there were many who were shocked and ashamed by the November riots and by what had been done in the name of the German people. He found among both Protestants and Catholics the uneasiness that might, be expected in view of the fact that the Nazi Left Wing “has lumped Christians and Jews together as undesirables who have to be ‘liquidated’.” Economically, Mr Callender declared, “Germany has tightened her belt far beyond the last notch,” and while plenty of good food is available to foreigners in the big hotels, the German people in their homes are subject to severe deprivations. The German people, he says, do not like the kind of life they are leading. “But,” he adds, “as yet it does not matter much, for the German people are not running Germany.” That is an unfortunate fact which has to be borne in mind in considering the present crisis and its probable outcome.