AXIS PACT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 November 1940, Page 5

AXIS PACT

ADHESION OF HUNGARY ENTIRELY UNIMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT. NAZI PROPAGANDA DISPLAY. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, November 20. _ The adhesion of Hungary to the Axis three-Power pact caused little surprise in London and is regarded as an entirely unimportant development in view of the effective control already exercised by Germany over Hungary’s policy. Hungary’s adherence to the pact does not appear in any way to strengthen Germany’s military position or weaken that of Britain. To record such a meagre result the elaborate machinery of the Vienna conference seems scarcely to have been justified, but the world has become accustomed in recent weeks to a new style of diplomacy which takes the head of the German State on feverish journeys about Europe. In Vienna today the occasion of welcoming the new Axis Power was taken for holding a reception which Hitler attended and at which Ribbentrop received the Hungarian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Count Teleki and Count Csaky, the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, and the Japanese Ambassador, Mr. Saburo Kurusu. In welcoming Hungary, which has the dubious distinction of being the first State to enter the pact, Ribbentrop is reported to have expressed the conviction that “the German army and this Government will make peace possible in the not distant future.”

The aims of the pact were pronounced in a communique in the familiar vague and high-sounding phrases. These include: "The restoration of a just world order and the establishment of that order for a long period.”

Everything goes to show that Germany sets great store by the propaganda value of her new diplomatic move, designed as it no doubt is, to serve as a step to the staging of a theatrical spectacle in which enslaved and exploited Europe will be portrayed to itself and the world as a new Utopia —if only Britain will leave it alone.