CUNNING WEB

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 March 1941, Page 5

CUNNING WEB

NAZI POST-WAR PROMISES PROPAGANDA IN MOSLEM WORLD. EFFORT TO MAKE FRIENDS IN OIL LANDS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright, LONDON, March 9. The Cairo correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” says the Axis propagandists are at present spinning a cunning web of post-war promises throughout the Moslem world and are redoubling their efforts to make friends in the oil lands. Britain, the correspondent states, must make up her mind about her peace aims in the Near East, where a hundred thousand loudspeakers spread the poison of Berlin, while paid whisperers are busy in the bazaars of Cairo and Bagdad, and also boatmen and beggars spread insidious talk in the villages of the Euphrates Valley. The Germans promise that the Jews will be driven from Palestine and the French driven from Syria, that the Pasha (aristocrat) class will lose power in Egypt in favour of the fellaheen (peasantry), and also that Germany will sponsor an Arab federation. Germany, says the correspondent, has one Minister in the Near East, but is making the most of his services. He is the sinister figure Fritz Grobba, Minister in Persia, who before the war was Minister in Iraq. He flits constantly across the scene and was last reported at Abadan, where there is a big oil refinery. The staff of his legation at Teheran, numbering some hundreds, is organising a vast underground propaganda machine. “Ven,” the French newspaper in Teheran, gets nearly all its news from the official German news agency, and Teheran is the only important capital in Asia without a daily English newspaper. Arabs in the Near East listen to broadcasts from Berlin by one Bahri, not because they sympathise with Hitler, but because Bahri is funny and exciting, whereas the Arabs say the London broadcasts are refined and dull. Bahri is an Iraqui who has been condemned to death in absentia. The British could have gained his services, but turned down his offer.

The Bagdad newspapers, the correspondent continues, are never openly pro-Axis, but equally they are not enthusiastically pro-British. The military junta running Iraq will not declare its hand, and Iraq’s last open move in the war game was- her refusal to break off diplomatic relations with Italy last June. The German influence is weaker in Saudi Arabia. Pilgrims to Mecca last year openly prayed for Britain’s victory, which is the nearest which can be got to the public opinion of Saudi Arabia. King Ibn Saud is invariably correct and friendly in his dealings with Britain, but a close adviser is the mysterious El Korkani, who is an exiled Libyan and therefore, presumably, hates the Italians, but who went to Berlin in 1939 to buy rifles for Ibn Saud and talked with Hitler. German influence is stated to be responsible for disturbances that have caused the closure of the Damascus market. Dozens of exiled Syrian agitators have been rounded up by Berlin to help spread rumours.