BUNGLING & BLUSTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 October 1939, Page 4

BUNGLING & BLUSTER

COMMENT ON RIBBENTROP’S SPEECH HYSTERIA THE DOMINANT NOTE. FACTS THAT CANNOT BE CONCEALED. \ (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 26. A further examination of neutral opinion of Herr von Ribbentrop’s speech confirms the early impression that it has done nothing to modify the view abroad that Germany is deservedly almost isolated in- the present struggle. Considered opinions now expressed by responsible English newspapers agree that Herr von Ribbentrop’s special pleading and invective were addressed to the German people, who, says the “Daily Telegraph,” have been screened by Dr Goebbels’s propaganda department from contact with the truth and have been disciplined to a limitless credulity.

"But,” says the “Telegraph,” “there are two damning facts which cannot be concealed from the outer world, however they may be reconciliable to German conscience—the rape of Czechoslovakia in flat defiance of Herr Hitler’s promise and the spoliation of Poland. Those are hardly achievements of a Government which, as Herr von Ribbentrop claims, has done its best to avoid war. Nor do they inspire confidence in the renewal of protestations that the German frontiers are now definite, that stable conditions have now been created in Europe, and that the consolidation of the Reich has been concluded.” “The Times,” which describes the speech as a “bungler’s apologia,” recalls the failure of Herr von Ribbentrop’s mission as Ambassador in London, and says that this first failure has been followed by a “series of blunders which has landed Germany in the worst diplomatic position in which she has ever found herself —far worse that that in which, with her allies around her, she stood at the beginning of the last war. The Danzig speech suggests that Herr von Ribbentrop in fact abandoned his uncongenial role of diplomatist for that of a blustering demagogue. To those who listened to it, the dominant note of his harangue was hysteria, and hysteria is a bad basis on which to conduct what the Nazis themselves describe as a war of nerves. Almost the only time statement which he made in the course of it was that the British people would at heart like to live in friendship with the German people, and it was perhaps the consciousness of his own heart that he and the Fuehrer had between them made this impossible that drove him to make the fantastic charges of a man who feels himself cornered and lashes out right and left.” ! . 1 ,

“The Times” adds: “There is not the slightest doubt that Herr von Ribbentrop has antagonised large sections of opinion in his own country—honest Nazis and others who genuinely consider that Communism is evil, theorists such as Herr Alfred Rosenberg, who believe in the doctrine of expansion north-eastward, admirals who do nbt care to see the Baltic become a Russian lake, and industrialists who looked to south-eastern Europe for fitting partners in German trade. All these, in greater or lesser degree, have seen their hopes dashed, and their aims miscarried. r| " ■ ’ “The author of their disillusionment is now trying by bluster and false charges to absolve himself from the consequences of his own ineptitude and to put upon the generals the responsibility for getting the country out of the difficult! position in which he has thrust it. He ended his lamentable speech with a call to that war against Britain which itself falsifies his own forecasts and declares the bankruptcy of his own policy.”