HIS AIM IS OUR DESTRUCTION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 65, 20 September 1940, Page 4

HIS AIM IS OUR DESTRUCTION

Why Peace With Hitler Is Impossible At the request of readers from many parts of the Dominion we print this summary of the talk broadcast by Sir Robert Vansittart on the morning of September 3. Sir Robert is Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the Foreign Office, and has long been recognised as an authority on international affairs. He is connected, through his first wife, with official circles in the United States.

Sea in « German ship. It was spring and the rigging was full of bright coloured birds. I noticed one bird more strongly marked than the others and with a heavier beak. Every now and then it sprang on some unsuspecting other bird and killed it. It was a shrike, or butcher bird,’ said Sir Robert. As a bird lover he had pondered this incident, and the thought ran across his mind, and had never left it, that that bird behaved as Germany did. He was 26 years of age at the time, and life looked good. There were 400,000,000 happinesses in Europe, but even then he felt the shadow on them, the shadow of Germany. That butcher bird’s record had a parallel in the Nazi’s rise to power. 1907 I was crossing the Black Record of History It took three generations, however, to develop in the German people that which paved the way for the Nazis. Sir Robert referred to the Prussian wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870, of the resort to forgery to justify some of them, which

the German people thought clever, how this forgery became an integral part of the system, how by hook or by crook the butcher bird got three wars, how Germany tried to promote wars in 1905 and 1911, when France had accepted humiliation to avoid plunging Europe into bloodshed. Then came the war of 1914-1918. What had Hitler to say of this? In his book "Mein Kampf," he said: "I sank on my knees and thanked Heaven in the fullness of my heart for being allowed to live through such times." , "But don’t think Hitler is an exception,’ said Sir Robert. Referring to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 he recalled how the King of Prussia had in letters to his wife "thanked God for this chance to kill thousands of Frenchmen." "Punch," had run a parody of the letter which ran:Thanks to the Lord, my dear Augusta, We have hit the French an awful buster. Ten thousand French we a sent below, Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.

Five Wars in 75 Years During these generations the German people had been taught to regard wars as salutary and necessary. So during 75 years Europe had had five wars. Many people tried hard to believe the best of the Nazis, but it was always the worst that prevailed. The Nazis were simply incapable of peace. It was not their idea of life. Every 15 years, on an average, the Germans sought war. The first three of these five wars had been the preparation and prelude. The fourth was a great bid and it had only just failed, and after it everyone had been so anxious to forget the war that they forget, too, the butcher bird which had destroyed 400,000,000 happinesses, they had forgotten its cruelty, its harsh peace terms at Brest-Litovsk and elsewhere when the Germans had had the upper hand, the indiscriminate sinkings, prison camps, use of gas and coldblooded cruelty. Thus everything was blamed on to the Treaty of Versailles. The whining bully was picked up, dusted and put on his feet. His former victims lent him money and he merely set about preparing for his next feast on them. The Treaty of Versailles had practically nothing to do with Germany’s fifth war, nor Germany’s war on private life and family life, on Christian culture, the burning of books and assaults of university culture. Most of the Treaty of Versailles had been dead long before 1939. The Nazis had by then gained more in Czechoslovakia, Austria and Poland than they had lost in Europe. Foiled, But Not Repentant The truth was that the Germans’ long teigning in militarism had led to expansion in Europe and then the desire for world domination. The setback of 1914-18 had not been sufficient to stem this thirst for domination. The butcher bird had been foiled but was not repentant, Sir Robert then dealt with the manner in which the Nazis had capitalised

the German blind faith in a mystical destiny and how they had plunged the world into war in which their inborn cruelty had again manifested itself in hideous destruction from the air. He gave quotations from many documents of this cruelty, how Hitler had proclaimed that he would not wage war on women and children and had promptly proceeded to do so. No one could believe him, any more than his predecessors, all of whom had been completely unable to keep their word. How was it that the Germans had surrendered themselves so freely to such a man? The answer was that the remnants of Prussian conscience were easily satisfied by the drug of mchanical obedience to any order, however cruel. Prussianism, militarism, lust for world conquest and Nazism-that was the sequence which had made the Germans the exponents of incredible cruelty. Like the butcher bird, they complained of being attacked by someone half their size and then proceeded to devour that object. Outlook to Christianity Of the Nazi outlock toward Christianity, Sir Robert quoted a remark by Hitler to Mussolini that " Christianity was the Bolshevisation of antiquity." The Minister of Ecclesiatical Affairs had said, "The Fuhrer is the carrier of a new revelation. Hitler is the true Holy Ghost." Pastor Neimoeller had been clapped into solitary confinement for life for expressing concern at the honours being bestowed on a man that were due only to God. Christianity had been rejected because it was too gentle to be compatible with world domination. Jesus was an enemy because He had spoken. of a Kingdom not of this world. "Hitler is no accident," said Sir Robert in conclusion. "We are fighting against evil things which have possessed the German people for three weary generations. The butcher bird is furiously at his habit again ... Since the fall of France the brunt of eliminating this horror has fallen on us . . . We believe we have the good wishes of all that is best in the world and we accept them. By the grace of God and for the salvation of mankind, we shall rescue the earth from these evils.