TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21280, 26 November 1940, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY

German Occupation Brussels is full of German boots, writes a correspondent at Brussels to the Times. You cannot forget them. If you close your eyes the sound of their tramp haunts you, be it day or at any hour of the night. And as accompaniments to the perpetual tramp, tramp, you hear the shouts and commands of the men who wear the boots, the noise of their innumerable motors, carts, tanks, trucks, motor-cycles buses and overhead the roar of aeroplane engines. There is no escape, for if you go into a restaurant or shop, especially a food shop, any hotel or bar, boulevard or square, the scene is everywhere dominated by men and women in German uniforms. Their names are perplexingly numerous. Besides the Deutsche Wehrmachtangehorige (the military proper) there are members ofethe Arbeitsdienst, Technische Nothilfe, Arbeitsorganisation Todt, Streifendienst, Nationalsazialistische Volkswohlfahrt, Hitlerjugend, various kinds of civil servants now in military uniform, bank clerks, transport officials. Kraft durch Freude men and women, and the Gestapo. But the striking thing about these hundreds and thousands of soldiers and semi-soldiers ranging from youths to grey-headed men, girls, nurses and what not, is that they do not live up to the creed imposed on the super-racial citizens of glorious and victorious Great Germany or maintain the dignity which their citizenship enjoins. They are certainly in the main tired, war-weary and demoralised to a high degree.