TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20922, 29 September 1939, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY

What is Germany ? “One returns inevitably to the question already posed—What is Germany?” states the Manchester Guardian. “There is but one mortally dangerous unknown, and that is the true mind of the German people. Are they, after all, a race with aggression in their very bones, a people fatally committed for evermore to the doctrines of Frederick; the Great, so that a Hitler or a Hohenzollern shall always be’ able to direct their extraordinary talent for discipline (not to mention self-deception) towards attempted conquest ? Has the Nazi nonsense ‘blood and race’ utterly overwhelmed the older Germany of philosophy, of music, of learning, and of a readiness to live and let live ? It cannot be so, hard as Dr. Goebbels tries to trumpet us into believing that it is. TVie latter-day Mastersinger of Nuremburg cannot for ever be offered to the world as Julius Streicher, the bull-necked Jew-baiter, though when the Nazi Conference assembles in that famous centre of German life, craftsmanship and traditions, Dr. Goebbels himself, with his anything but tuneful strains, would not make at all a bad Beckmesser. But some day, surely, the true and unchallengeable prize-song of sweetness as well as strength (which no sane European grudges her, so it be wisely held and used) must emerge from Germany.”