HITLER AND ENCIRCLEMENT.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1939, Page 4

HITLER AND ENCIRCLEMENT.

M.ANV readers of the cabled report of Herr Hitler’s latest oratorical outburst, in which he hurled defiance at “British encirclement,” may perceive in it only ravings of a victim of delusion. British people know, for example, that they have as a body no desire to encircle Germany or any other nation and the declared opinion of President “Roosevelt is that no peaceful nation can possibly be encircled.

When, however, one turns to Herr Hitler’s own exposition of German aims—aims that have been in measure achieved under his leadership, to the great undermining of security and of peace prospects in Europe—his fears of encirclement become in a sense understandable. As they are outlined in “Mein Kainpf,” which the Fuhrer is still forcing upon the German people as the essentially authentic exposition of Nazi policy, these aims are the establishment of a European hegemony. Herr Hitler wants a European empire of upwards of two hundred million people, most of whom would be mere subjects and not citizens. At least half of the population of the empire of his dreams would be of other than German race. “When we speak of new territory in Europe today,” he has written, “we must principally think of Russia and of the border Stales subject to her.” The seizure of Czechoslovakia is merely an item and early instalment of a programme which looks to the conquest of other territories with a population more than sufficient to double that of the Greater Germany of today.

What Herr Hitler denounces as the encirclement of Germany is, therefore, nothing else than progress made by free nations towards an agreement under which they would cooperate in offering united resistance to German aggression designed to overthrow their liberties. In his outlook. Germany is being encircled in the extent to which she is being prevented from subjugating, subordinating and exploiting other nations to laer heart’s content.