LISTENINGS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 95, 18 April 1941, Page 15

LISTENINGS

Perpetrated and illustrated by

KEN.

ALEXANDER

IMPROPAGANDA

ler snarled that he could not allow that, nation to injure his prestige by refusing to hand itself over to him. The great dictator had to save his face-and what a face! Now that he has again cast off the mask the world sees it as it is and always has been. attacking Yugoslavia Hit-

Hitler admits that it will not be a walk-over. That is why Goebbels tried to make it a talk-over. His purpose, as in Poland, was to intimidate, and, if that failed, to justify the crime of unjustifiable attack. He failed both ways. A commentator remarked the other day on the paucity of imagination displayed in the dissemination of Goebbels’s propaganda poison. It never departs from the old lines. Its consecutiveness is as firmly established as the movements of a Bach fugue. In no other respect does it resemble Bach or any other composer, except Barnum, Goebbels’s gas orgam#operates something like this: "Won’t capitulate, eh?" shrieks the maestro of microphony mush. "Switch on the thunder and pump up the pandemonium! I'll show

the world who put the ‘jit’ into jitters! Rattle the sabres and clash the ironmongery! How’re they taking it?" "They say the music is loud but not impressive, chief," answers the observer. "In fact, they reckon you’re slipping." "Slipping, am I?" howls Goebbels. "Turn on the atrocity roarer! Give it all you’ve got! German minorities chased with choppers — German schoolchildren getting their wrists twisted by barbarian scholars goaded to atrocity by Churchill end Roosevelt-defenceless dachshunds hounded through the streets by Balkan devil-dogs sooled on by Eden — Mein Kampf torn up for shaving paper — the Fuhrer’s photo used to advertise flea-powder-German nationals branded on the glitz with hot swastikas. How’s it going now?" shouts the professor of perfidity, striking all the bass notes with his. fists and feet. "Not so well," observes the observer. "Even the German minorities are protesting that they don’t want to go home to the Reich. The Italian minority is arguing that if they are being stoned in the streets, it is being done without their knowledge; and the German school children say that the only twist in the wrist they get is when they have to write German." ~* "Himmel!" howls Goebbels, "Switch on number three. Such insults cannot continue. When Germany says there are atrocities, there must be atrocities, And who knows more about atrocities than Germany? We have threatened friendship, and we will make friends by force if necessary. How’s. that?" "No good, chief," sighs the observer. "They say they’ve heard it all before."

‘Like heil they have!" shouts the dope dokter. "Well, perhaps we had better try number four — Let’s-all-be-jolly-good-pals and _ hands-across-the sea." "Hopeless, chief,’ says the observer. "They’ve translated it to hands-that cross-and-seize. We’d better lay off es let the Fuhrer play the last card." "Which one is that?" : "The one which says that he is waging war to preserve peace. He reckons it’s a trump." Just so! But the world reckons it will prove the "last trump" for Hitler. |