MORAL CRIPPLES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 June 1943, Page 4

MORAL CRIPPLES

HITLER’S ACCURSED GENERATION.

RUSSIAN WRITER’S FIERY DENUNCIATION. (By D. Manuilsky, in “Soviet War News.”) We are approaching that great celebration of which Stalin spoke. We are winning it by the labour of our hands —those same hands that built factories, ploughed virgin immensities, created new life in the Soviet state. For the first time after months of German occupation, village children stand smiling at the windows of their homes. In Velikie Luki some German sergeant arranged a syllabus of studies for Russian children. He specified that they must not be taught to count above 100. That would have exceeded the limit of Fascist literacy.

But today the Red Army is giving life back to millions of Soviet children, symbols of the immortality of our country. All little joys fade into nothingness beside this immense, boundless joy of the Red Army's advance. There are still many obstacles in your way, comrade fighter. The Fascist beast is unwilling to abandon Russian soil. He is still hitting back. He does not like parting with easy booty, the easy wealth Hitler promised him. He wanted a war like he had in France —-not our sort of war. He wanted to live at other people’s expense, drink other people’s champagne, grow fat on other people’s chocolates, dress himself in stolen cloth, trick out his wife in other women’s finery.

At Stalingrad, Hitler deceived his men. But let us admit frankly that they wanted to- be deceived, because his'lies corresponded to the mentality bred in them by a whole lifetime of lies and deceit. They are slaves deprived of rights, without individual minds; slaves accustomed to complete subordination.

Hitler promised to make them masters of the earth. He stole scraps of reactionary ideology from every quarter in order to justify the greedy desires of German imperialism, and poisoned the psychology of the young German generation so that they became a demoralised gang of plunderers and murderers.

This generation, unscrupulous and brutal, is merrily robbing other people's countries. With cold cruelty it is exterminating the inhabitants of occupied lands. Hitler has created an accursed generation of moral cripples which brings humanity nothing but devastation, death and destruction. The Hitlerite is brave when he has a rifle and faces a defenceless person. He is ready to commit the meanest, most incredible crimes if he is sure he will not be punished. He is insolent.

But he is the biggest coward in the world when confronted with a strong enemy. When he is knocked hard he loses all his self-confidence. He whimpers and begs for mercy. He accuses others of all the crimes he has committed.

In Russia the tables were turned on him. As he rushes frantically towards the ever-narrowing gap, no hand offers him a cup of water, no one passes him a crust of bread. The smoke of towns and villages he himself has destroyed stings his eyes. The Hitlerites will fall exhausted against the gallows they themselves set up. People will spit in their faces. Death will be waiting for them everywhere. They will start talking about justice and asking for mercy. With tears in their eyes they will protest their innocence and the guilt of others. Then they will start accusing their Fuehrer and complain that they were deceived. They will at last be forced to understand what they have brought on Germany; they will understand how terrible is the responsibility with which they have saddled eighty million Germans.

Comrade fighter! Pursue them and rout them* Pursue them and rout them so that we shall be finished with Fascism once and for all. Thereafter all who covet other people's wealth will know, without any misunderstanding, that in the country called the U.S.S.R. the roads are barred and the gates are closed.