INNOCENT BLOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 November 1942, Page 4

INNOCENT BLOOD

THAT CRIES TO HEAVEN FOR VENGEANCE NAZI ATROCITIES IN POLAND. MERCILESS MASSACRE & PILLAGE In an editorial oh the German Terror in Poland, “The Daily Telegraph” said, not long ago:— There is nothing fortuitous or specifically Nazi about the fiendish atrocities that with redoubled fury the German oppressors are committing in Poland since Himmler’s visit last spring. It is a simple assertion of the right claimed by the “Herrenvolk,” not only since Hitler’s advent, to deal as it pleases with “the lesser breeds without the law.” A new dossier of horrors has Just been published by the Polish Ministry of Home Affairs that is a continuation of the story reaching back to the heydav of Bismarck’s reign. In the eyes of the majority of the German people the quintessence or iniquity perpetrated at Versailles was that it deprived the Germans of the power enjoyed and exercised before 1914, to plant German colonists on Polish soil or to flog Polish school children for refusing to repeat the Catechism in German. From that time to the merciless pillage and wholesale massacre by Hitlerism, Poland today may indeed be a far cry, but the Kaiser regime no less than that of Hitler aimed at the extermination of Polish national and cultural life. The difference is not of intention but of degree of ruthlessness in the execution. The Kaiser regime was guilty merely of half-heartedness in the execution of atrocities, a shortcoming that Hitler lists . in “Mein Kampf” at the head of unpardonable sins.

The same Pan-German tradition was at work before the 1914 as after the 1939 era, ohly ih a less totalitarian form and in the use arid abuse of power bv Germany, but for that change it is the same thing. Foreign Minister Eden’s statement last week that “by continuing to support arid to tolerate the Nazi regime the German people are accepting ever increasing responsibility for action, which that regime is committing in their name” is most explicit to date made on behalf of the British Government. It may be said to make the Anal abandonment of the tendency at one time manifested in the official quarter to dissociate German masses from the guilt of their rulers. Certain schools of thought still uphold such a view on the ground that orily a small minority of German people are allowed to know the truth. A great deal no doubt is systematically suppressed. The destruction of Lidice for example and the reprisal massacres in Bohemia and Moravia are probably known only to the comparatively few who tune in to the Prague radio. Fewer still have likely been informed by Goebbels of the terror in Poland. . The 8.8. C., however, offers the inhabitants of the Reich an abundant opportunity to learn the facts and it is no answer on their part to plead penalties for listening in to the foreign broadcasts. A nation tamely permitting its Government, despite all proofs it had of that Government's unscrupulous mendacity, to stop up all external sources of information is the author of its own ignorance and an accomplice of its Government’s crimes. They sometimes play with the argument that news of atrocities are withheld from home consumption in the Reich for fear of its effects on humanitarian sentiments of the nation. Such attempts to exonerate the German people grotesquely misrepresent facts. News of massacres is suppi'essed because it would betray the existence of the seething unrest .in the subject countries and .would thus belie the fairy tales sedulously propagated inside Germany about a Europe idyllically united and happy under the benevolent German rule. Actually it is altogether improbable that the German people generally are as ignorant of truth as Goebbels would like thehi to be- , , a Even -if they do not know every, detail the experience with the Gestapo in their own country is.sufficient to make a great majority of them shrewdly aware of the sort of, thing going on in the occupied countries. In a word they are content to. let atrocity tyke its course and are still hoping for a victory to shield them from the wrath to come. It is fair to assume that eyen Goebbels cannot deceive all the Herrenvolk” all the time and it will be fair to act upon that assumption on the day of reckoning. . ■ .. “Innocent blood,” as Cardinal Hinslev has declared, “cries to Heaven for vengeance.” ....