Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1940. MAKING WAR ON TRUTH.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 July 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1940. MAKING WAR ON TRUTH.

TN Germany and in other territories dominated meantime by Hitler and his Nazi gang, telling the truth definitely is a crime. Even to listen to the truth is a crime. For reasons that are from its own standpoint entirely adequate, the Nazi dictatorship menaces with death any members of the enslaved multitudes under its control, in the Reich and elsewheie, wio venture to listen in to foreign broadcast. Because it is based on lies, the Nazi dictatorship must uphold falsehood as if it were something noble and sacred and must persecute and suppress truth as if it were something vile. These facts are familiar to the members of the free nations that, are fighting Germany, but it is very necessary that they should be grasped firmly and kept constantly in mind because they define and determine so cleaily the issues that are at stake in the war.

On that account special interest may be held to attach to one of the latest examples of the Nazi war on truth—the arrest of the Dutch Commander-in-Chief, General Winkelmann, allegedly on the ground that he failed to observe the armistice conditions imposed on his country by the German invaders. The facts of this episode have now been made known, and they command attention, not only on account of the abominable persecution of a gallant and true-hearted Dutch officer, but because of the revealing light they east on Nazi methods and on the inversion of all decent standards and principles these methods entail.

The “crime” for which General Winkelmann has been arrested and taken as a prisoner to Germany is his exposure of the falsity of a charge made in a Nazi White Book that the Low Countries had participated with Britain and France in a plot to attack the Reich. The only actual document appearing to give any colour to this deliberately false accusation was a letter from General Winkelmann, dated March 23, and instructing Dutch representatives in Belgium, England and France to inquire what military co-operation those countries could offer to the Netherlands. The German White Book suppressed the fact that.this letter was delivered sealed to the Dutch representatives, and with instructions that the seals should not be broken unless there was a German attack on Holland. Stating the facts, in a circular addressed to his officers and non-commis-sioned officers,’ General Winkelmann demonstrated that the German White Book was a tissue of lies.

Having deviated so far from Nazi standards as to tell the simple truth, the Dutch Commander-in-Chief is now at the mercy of Hitler and his gangsters and the immediate sequel may well be tragic. With that at best in doubt, the episode serves one useful purpose in demonstrating how completely and irreconcilably the Nazis are divided from all who wish to base national and international standards on truth, justice and fair dealing. Consistent and persistent lying by the Nazis, in their war communiques from day to day, and in all their propaganda, goes hand in hand with the bestial cruelty they have exhibited in their war on peaceful nations.

In all their actions, these perverted gangsters stamp themselves as creatures with whom there can be no understanding or peace. They have set themselves finally apart from all who wish to observe the ordinary decencies of life. If the story of the criminal invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland, of Norway and Denmark, the Low Countries and France had never been written, the Nazis would still have appeared as what they are in their treatment of an honest soldier against whom the only charge to be brought is that he insisted on telling the truth. Here, as in so much that has gone before, it is demonstrated that there can never be any compromise between the Nazis and the British and other forces of freedom and democracy now engaged.with them in a life and death struggle. If human ideals are to survive, Nazism must be destroyed, not in hatred, but rather in the spirit in which enlightened men set themselves to combat an epidemic of fell disease. AN EXODUS OPPOSED. MUCH as it is regretted, the postponement by the British Government of the scheme to transfer children from the United Kingdom to temporary homes in the Dominions and in the United States evidently must be accepted. The fact that naval escorts cannot at present be provided for ships conveying children overseas is in itself decisive and in his statement on the subject in the House of Commons, reported yesterday, Mr Churchill made it clear that in any case somewhat narrow restrictions must apply to any scheme of the kind. It is most undesirable (the British Prime Minister said in part) that anything in the nature of a large-scale exodus from this country should take place and I do not believe that the military situation requires or justifies such a proceeding, having regard to the relative dangers of going and staying, nor in fact is it physically possible. It is rather obvious that only a comparatively small percentage of the millions of children in Britain could in any case be conveyed overseas within a limited time, and that an overwhelming proportion of these children must in any case remain exposed to whatever dangers the war entails. Much less practical value and importance thus appears to attach to the proposed transfer of children overseas than to what can be done within the United Kingdom to safeguard children by moving them from threatened areas to others in which they would be less exposed to danger. There can be nothing but complete sympathy with the humanitarian desire to place as many children as possible beyond the reach of war dangers, but the limits imposed on practicable action will have to be recognised even when the British Government finds itself able, as it hopes to be at a later stage, to sanction the transfer overseas of a certain number of children. In view of these limits, 100, the selection of the children to be taken overseas may raise difficult and delicate problems, apart from any question arising out of- the relative financial standing of parents. If, for example, it were decided to extend preference to those children most likely to be affected adversely by war dangers and associations, questions of health standards would be raised which might not easily be resolved.

Those who are most desirous of seeing as many British children as possible established in safely overseas, and are ready and anxious to co-operate to that end, may be able to agree that if is as well that the postponement now decided upon by the British Government affords time for a re-examination of the whole position. In the period of delay thus enforced it should be possible to determine more clearly than has been done yet the dimensions and nature of a practicable scheme.