PROPAGANDIST’S TALK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 December 1939, Page 6

PROPAGANDIST’S TALK

RODERICK MENZEL BROADCASTS FOR NAZIS. AUSTRALIANS CRITICISED. By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright. NEW YORK. December 27. Broadcasting from Berlin to North America at Christmas, Roderick Menzel described his experiences in Australia on Christmas Eve in 1934. i He criticised his dinner hosts' "unChristian hatreds and insults to totalitarians,” and described his own spirited defence of Germany. He added that Australia’s anti-totalitarianism was the result of cheap journalists stirring up unfounded hatreds and agitating and inciting the population. Till Germany absorbed Czechoslovakia Roderick Menzel had been the backbone of the Czech Davis Cup loam. More recently ho competed in international tennis as a German representative. and now he is busy broadcasting in excellent English ofticial German propaganda from Berlin. Menzel, who has been a stormy petrel of international tennis, and once called Australia's famous Kooyong's courts a cow-paddock, has been heard locally in several short-wave broadcasts in which he described the normality of : Berlin's life and the splendid treatment j accorded British and French Air Force officers in German prison camps. He opened his first remarks will) greetings Io English listeners from himself as an international sportsman: "I. who have I spoken at 25 lawn tennis dinners and other functions in England, calling you my very good friends, now have to call you my enemies." Menzel is probably one of the most highly educated of all world athletes. He has made his mark as a novelist, dramatist, pool and journalist, and is an accomplished linIguist. speaking six languages fluently.