Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7. 1940. STILL THE HUN OF OLD.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 February 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7. 1940. STILL THE HUN OF OLD.

A CABLE todav contains references by newspapers published in neutral countries to the campaign of murder am terror which is being engaged in by Germany m sulking nulll ai sh Norwegian and Swedish comment being very outspoken in I • connection. After years marked by aggression >n more t a one quarter of the earth, the civilised world has ,Si pP 1 on horrors.” With blunted conscience it has grown tia.-J habituated to the sight, of free peoples benig despoiled o then freedom and subjected to oppression ! articularh nAe \ Zealand, so fortunately removed from the sorrows ol Hu 1 , we. are tempted to forget that, while we are leading our con - paraiively placid lives, countless victims are enduring day h> dav the almost unbelievable excesses ol the Nazi terioi. had a salutary reminder the other day in the Vatican denunc . - lion of the fiendish cruelty being practised by both conqiieiois of the “Martyr Slate of Poland,” but more especially by e Germans. It was stated in the Vatican broadcast that h< depopulation of once-prosperons towns was combined with t lit worst religious persecution for 1000 years. Ihe eonques Czech o-Slovakia and Poland has not meant just the simp e erasure of the two republics from Hie map in order to enlarg 1 the Greater Germany. It has meant and still ineans-the massacring and torturing of literally myriads ol helpless I oles ami (’Zechs' From its seizure of power in Germany the Nazi regime has relied on terrorism as a constant weapon. The savagery is being visited on the Czechs and Poles not only unceasingly but systematically.

liven in the blackest chapters of man s never-emling inhumanity to man, it would be difficult to find a parallel io Hie brutality on the scale of Hie persecution to which the Nazis have subjected whole nations. Last September tor instance the premature revolt of the embittered Czechs was repressed by wholesale slaughter. A. month later Hie Independence Day demonstrations in Prague led to the immediate execution ol over one hundred students, while thousands ol Czechs were deported Io the Reich Ipr service in forced labour gangs. In Poland the ghoulish work of the Gestapo and secret service men is being carried out with even more savage ferocity, in many instances putting Attila’s Huns to shame in the maiiei o diabolical atrocities. The last war and this war has shown the world that Hie German is still the Hun ol nearly fifteen hundred years ago. At Gdynia hundreds of people, including leading Polish citizens, were murdered by the Nazis by mass execitlinn, sometimes after gross tortures, being reminiscent ol Attila s atrocities when he laid Thrace and Illyria to waste in ill. murdering and torturing women and children as well as men, and his terrible campaign of slaughter in Northern Italy in the year 452. The .Jewish reserve round Lublin has been set aside, not as a "living room” lor the .lews ol Greater Geimany, but as a death chamber —a concentration area where they will suffer gradual extermination.

The mounting evidence from unimpeachable sources ol the hideous manner in ’which Germany has pillaged, enslaved and terrorised the peoples over whom she has gained dominal ion. affords a grim object lesson in the late which would equally befall the people of Hie British Empire were the Allies Io bo defeated in the war. The triumph ol the modern Huns would not only mean losses to the Allied countries —including New Zealand —but also Hie enslavement of their peoples in a world given over Io Hie suppression of all civilised standards., I hat dire prospect alone should nerve us to strain every ellorl Io avert it. In France, General Sikorski's Government lias set up a representative Polisli National Council, with Paderewski as president, to ael as a Polish parliament. A Polish army has been reconstituted, ami Polish destroyers are operating with the British Navy. Above all. the Poles and Czechs are putting their faith in the strength and determiiyation of the Allies, and we must not betray that faith.