HITLER’S BOAST AT DANZIG

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20915, 21 September 1939, Page 6

HITLER’S BOAST AT DANZIG

Herr Hitler’s speeches do not now have the effect that they had before the war began. Then it was a matter of seeking signs of hope that war could be avoided. Now all such hopes have been dashed and everyone knows what to expect from the Nazi dictator. When he spoke at Danzig on Tuesday Herr Hitler was on the crest of the wave. He was hailed in the once Free City as a conqueror and liberator, and his language became expansive accordingly. He showed a reckless disregard for the truth and indulged his flair for swashbuckling to the limit. There was apparent no sense of humility because Poland lay in ruins about him and, because he came to Danzig as a victor over Poland, no outward indication of a sense of the impending doom of his own dictatorial regime. The allegation that a solution of the problem could have been reached at the end of August was typical of Herr Hitler’s attitude. Of course a solution could have been reached. The Allies could have bowed before the dictator's demands and allowed him to sieze all Poland without a gun being fired. “I waited and waited, but nothing happened except Polish mobilisation," he told the Danzig Nazis, and they probably believed him. But the hypocrisy of the statement is now a matter of history. Herr Hitler waited for Poland and her allies to surrender their independence. Because they refused to do that the unreasoning tyrant now taunts them over the mangled body of the Polish nation. Herr Hitler referred with fine scorn to the “foolish propaganda" of Britain and France aimed at the destruction of his regime and boasted his pride in being the object of their attack. Russia and Germany, apparently the only nations with any rights, would settle the Polish situation, he said, and he warned France and Britain of terrible consequences should they interfere; the word “surrender" would not be uttered by Germany even in six or seven years. And again he informed the world that the “restoration of the Greater Reich had been completed," just as he made a similar declaration before the rape of Austria, at the Munich conference and before the absorption of Czechoslovakia. And now, presumably, the world can await-the pleasure of the man who, arrogant in the hour of temporary victory, is expected to announce the terms upon which he will spare the rest of the world from immediate “liberation."