NEW FIFTH COLUMN

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21176, 27 July 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

NEW FIFTH COLUMN

Anti-Nazi Propagandists : Underground Activity

(Erwin D. Canham, in Christian Science Monitor.)

TN UTILISING secret agents, spies, and A so-called traitors to aid its invasion of smaller countries, Germany is today only using on. a different scale the forces which sapped the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany itself during the last war. And the Nazis are calling to the world’s attention a weapon which may before long be powerfully turned on themselves. The Gestapo may be strong and ruthless, but as the war prolongs it will have to deal with a Pervasive, Penetrating Force: the anti-Nazis, the patrols, the old conspirators, the refugees so thickly spread already through its conquered territories and abroad. To show the importance of this Fifth Column, one has only to recall a little history. You can read much of it in the current issues of the Saturday Evening Post, where Emanuel V. Voska with Will Irwin is revealing his counter-espionage activities during the World War. The vast system by which Czechs, Slovaks, and others uncovered and publicised German activities in the Americas—and thus powerfully assisted in bringing the United States into the war—is not realised by many otherwise well-informed citizens. The historians are disappointingly silent on a number of these significant points during the World War years. Counterespionage agents have not usually been willing to talk about themselves. But everybody who knew wartime or post-war Europe must have known of the honeycombs of intrigue. I remember, for instance, hearing two brothers, high Polish officials, telling fifteen years afterward of their wartime services in the higher commands respectively of the Austrian and Russian armies. Similarly an Alsatian newspaper editor friend of mine would occasionally open up, in Strasbourg, and tell of his doing as a loyal Frenchman living within Germany through the last war. But the Czechs and Slovaks were probably the Best Agents Of All, and Captain Voska—newly escaped from Germany a few weeks ago by means just as devious as any used twenty-five years ago —is now telling their story. Captain Voska’s tales are thrilling. But they are also significant. For they show what must be going on already now. and what will go on increasingly in the future. Well-informed persons know that the antiNazi refugee network is already very extensive. Working from headquarters in Paris, many alert and desperately brave Germans are seeking to bring about the downfall of the Hitler regime. They are Fifth Column allies of France and Britain.

But they are now joined by a good many others. The Czechs and Slovaks, having tasted twenty years of freedom, are all the more eager to get it back. The Poles are willing allies. There are now also Danes and Norwegians, Italian antiFascists, Netherlanders abroad, the vast Jewish community—some of whom were pro-German in the last war—and in general all nationals of small countries and groups which were victims, past or potential, of Hitler’s aggression. What Can These People Do ? Well, in the last war it was tremendously important when Professor Masaryk caused to be smuggled out of Prague his memorandum on the economic weak spots in the Austra-Hungarian Empire. There are today plenty of refugees in London, Paris, or New York who can furnish almost any accurate data that is desired on Central Europe. There are many essential helps in waging war, and one of them is to find out all about the enemy country. The slightest factual detail may be vital. A certain eminent refugee lives not many miles from where these words are being written. Occasionally some representative of the Allies will visit him. It is not for purposes of taking tea. It is to check information and interpretations. There are other practical uses. If the Fifth Column of anti-Nazis in the New World is not able ultimately to uncover an frustrate espionage and sabotage acnctivities of Axis agents in the Americas, then they are not good for much. It is our guess that the German refugees in this hemisphere, the Czechs, Poles, Slovaks and others, will do a very neat job in Messing Up Any Funny Business the Gestapo may try to perpetrate here. They ought to be able to handle the Communists, too, if the latter try to help Berlin through the Red International. And the anti-Nazi Fifth Column should soon be of tremendous importance within Greater Germany itself, especially in the conquered portions. It may not be so easy to operate now as it was in the decadent old Austro-Hungarian Empire. On the other hand patriotic or personal grievances are today keener and minorities even larger, so the Fifth Column will probably be more important than it was a quarter of a century ago. But we will have to wait some time before the whole story is told. We can safely assume that there is a great deal more to all this Fifth Column business than has yet appeared in print. And quite possibly the Nazis’ foreign techniques will turn into their worst boomerang. We’re no judge of the historic genius for underground activities of Central Europeans if they don’t.