APPEAL TO BRITAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 July 1940, Page 5

APPEAL TO BRITAIN

TO LISTEN TO “REASON” SOME POINTS IN HITLER'S SPEECH. WILD TALK ABOUT ALLIED WARMONGERS. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 10 a.m.) BERLIN, July 19. Herr von Ribbentrop, Marshal Goering and Count Ciano were on the platform when Herr Hitler addressed the Reichstag. Marshal Goering opened the proceedings and paid a tribute to the German and Italian dead. Herr Hitler said he had summoned the Reichstag firstly, to give Germans ' an inkling of historic events, secondly, to express his admiration for German soldiers and thirdly, to make another appeal to common sense. He said: “This is my final appeal. French and British culture have demonstrably failed in world leadership. The Nazi movements and programme were simply to cancel the Treaty of Versailles. All attempts to achieve this peacefully failed. Even on September 2 peace could have been saved if Mr Churchill and others had had the feeling of responsibility that I had.

We then accepted Signor Mussolini s peace plan, but the British and French warmongers needed war. I now speak as a victor, proposing a reasonable peace, not as a victor demanding capitulation of the vanquished. I appeal once more to England. A world empire will be destroyed if England insists on continuing the war.” Herr Hitler did not deliver an ultimatum. but made it clear that rejection of his appeal to “reason” would result in a final attack on Britain by all the forces at Germany’s command.