KNEW HITLER WELL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 December 1940, Page 3

KNEW HITLER WELL

HUGH WALPOLE’S MEMORIES OF MANY MEETINGS. ■•QUITE TENTH-RATE.” ■■ Did I ever know Adolf Hitler? Oddly enough I think that I did better than I know some of my real friends, writes Sir Hugh Walpole, the New Zealand born writer in "John o' London's Weekly." It was in the early 'twenties during two successive summers al. Bayrueth. I stayed there for more than two months, summer after summer, with Lauritz Melchior who was at that time singing the leading tenor roles in the Wagner operas. I was also a friend of Winnie Wagner, wife of Siegfried Wagner's only son. Many strange stories there are about that odd adventurer, but the only thing that matters here is that Adolf Hitler, fresh from his Munich prison, passed some time at Bayreuth.

He was, and is. a great friend of Frau Wagner, and he had, and he has, a passion for Wagner's music. I sat in a box with him on the occasion when Melchior made his debut in “Parsifal." I have never heard him sing as he did that day. The tears poured down Hitler’s cheeks.

During the second of these summers I was with Hitler on many occasions, talked, walked and ate with him. I think he rather liked me. I liked him and. despised him. both emotions which time has proved I was wrong to indulge. I liked him because he seemed to me a poor fish quite certain to be shortly killed. He was shabby, unkempt, very feminine. very excitable. He resembled. I thought then, mediums I had seen at Conan Doyle's flat. There was something pathetic about him, I'felt. I felt rather maternal to him! He spoke a great deal about his admiration of England and the need of her alliance with Germany.

I thought him fearfully ill-educated and quite tenth-rate. When Winnie Wagner said he would be the saviour of the world I just laughed. I was wrong about one thing—his evil. I didn't detect it then. I thought him silly, brave and shabby—rather like a necromantic stump orator. I didn't realise at all his one supreme gift—the gift that has brought him and his country where they are today—his gift for knowing instincively the “spot” in any man’s character to attack—the weak spot, the spot that is ungenerous, greedy, mean, traitorous, lecherous, and above all, cowardly.

Oh, yes, he is a remarkable man al 1 ., right! He is among the evil, slinking, betraying Bagmen of history. Why didn't I put poison into his coffee in Wahnfried?