QUICK CHANGES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 February 1943, Page 6

QUICK CHANGES

DIRECTED BY GOEBBELS. REJOICING OR MOURNING BY ORDER, The recent order to Germans to observe thre4 days’ mourning for the annihilation of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad followed closely on a period in which the whole population of the Reich was ordered by “Truthful Joe” Goebbels to rejoice, or take the consequences. Reports from Switzerland would indicate, a “Manchester Guardian” writer observed not long ago, that Truthful Joe’s “war of nerves” has now gone over to the defensive phase, for his present campaign is “to build a moral West Wall.” Thousands of meetings are to be organised with “For Freedom, Justice, and Bread” as the order of the day and “optimism is compulsory.” It may be, but the framers of that last edict can hardly have heard of the transatlantic wisecrack which asserts that 'a pessimist is a person who has to live with an optimist. If you wish to encourage a brighter outlook it is usually better to proceed by persuasion rather than force; in all the world’s history the number of people who have been thumped into smiling is not large. But all these Swiss details of Joe’s latest effort to get the German people to pull themselves up by the seat of their own pants suggest a mighty big change from the days of the “Strength Through Joy” movement. The system now under trial is apparently “Be Joyful or Go to Gaol.”