TONE CHANGED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1942, Page 4

TONE CHANGED

HITLER’S PUBLIC UTTERANCES.

ARROGANT TALK DISAPPEARS.

Nothing is more revealing of the gravity of the -situation for Germany today, a Frenchman points out, than a comparison between what Hitler was saying a year ago at this time and what he is saying today. The arrogant tone of the victor sweeping all before him is gone.

On January 31, a year ago, Hitler told his people that the year then just ended, referring to 1940, with its blitz campaigns, had. “virtualy decided the issue of this war.” He added that 1941 would be “the historic year of the setting up of a great New Order in Europe.” But 1941 has come and gone, and the “great New Order” is as far off as ever. The year 1942, says Hitler, will bring “great victories,” but he is obliged to add that he does not know when the war will end, and there is an appeal to the divinity which is amusing coming from the mouth of a persecutor of Protestants, Catholics and Jews alike. “The speech of Hitler,” says a writer in “France,” the French daily newspaper published in London, “is that of a man whom fortune has abandoned and who finds within himself no further reason for hope.”