A. P. L.

A. P. L.

BARRY DOMVILE
Robin's Tree
8th May 1939

RUSKIN.
Political Economy of Art.

Field Marshal GOERING
addressing the British and German war veterans.

 

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Der Führer

 

It has often been said here of the Fuehrer that he was "only a house painter" or that he had "no education", and the general tendency of opinion in England is that he was not a public school man and therefore is not much good. This attitude shows not only a regrettable snobbishness, but a total ignorance of the origin of so many great men. It is an error which we in Scotland are not likely to fall into, as so many of our famous Scotsmen have come from a similar stock, and have had a similar upbringing and education to that of the Fuehrer.

The Highland crofter with his fierce independence, and the poor Scottish student who worked on the farm all summer to pay his university fees, are our equivalent to the finest type of European peasant, who produces a Mussolini, and a Hitler, and the small farmers of America who produced an Abraham Lincoln.

It is among the peasants of Europe that the old customs and traditions are maintained; the townspeople tend to become all of one pattern, and it is to the country that we must go to find the old costumes handed down for centuries, and the old legends and fairy tales. The people in the mountain and forest districts of Germany still live in the houses, and wear on gala days the costumes with which the Grimms fairy tales are illustrated; through these tales we live in an imaginary world in our childhood, with which the familiar Grimms fairy tales are illustrated; through these tales we live in an imaginary world in our childhood which is the familiar every day world to them. However strong may be our link with Germany in later life, through the Protestant religion which we owe to her, and through her philosophy and music, the ties formed at our most impressionable age are with the peasant.

In the district of Waldviertel, lives a race of peasants who, in spite of having been part of the Austrian Empire, still speak the Bavarian dialect, and have clung fiercely to their traditions and racial independance. In 1672 a son was born to two of these peasants who bore the name of Stephan Hitler. His descendants lived on in the same district, until Alois Hitler, the Führer's father, determined to see the world, and set off on foot for Vienna. He became a Customs official, but love of the soil was strong in him, and he soon bought a farm in the beautiful district where the Inn joins the Danube, where he established his family, and to which he went on his retirement to take up again the life of a farmer which had been led by his ancestors.

It was here that Hitler passed his early childhood, and attended the monastery school where he first saw the Swastika carved on the arch of a stone well.

As a boy his desire was to be an artist. On the death of his parents he went to Vienna with a few coins in his pocket taking his portfolio of drawings with which he hoped to gain entrance to the Vienna art school. "You will never be a painter", said the Professor who glanced through his drawings, "but you show some talent for architecture". An interesting prophesy for the future of the boy who was to superintend the rebuilding of Berlin.

Rejected as a pupil both at the school of art and architecture, he found himself alone in Vienna with only a few coins between him and starvation. Building was going on everywhere and he found employment as a builder's labourer: the boy of 18 entering on a life of desperate poverty learnt to know all that was most sordid and cruel in the life of a great city. For long his only home was the corner of a cellar which he shared with other workmen. His fellow workmen were all followers of Karl Marx, and endless discussions went on in which young Hitler joined. He became convinced that the Socialists and Communists were on the wrong lines, refused to join the trade union and for this refusal suffered an early martyrdom, - he had no sooner got a job than his fellow workmen had him dismissed.

During this period he learnt the close connection between the Socialist movement in Vienna and the Jews. He has told us of his astonishment when he met in the street a Rabbi with long locks dressed in his caftan. He realised for the first time the existence in the heart of his civilisation of a people of an Eastern race and Eastern religion, foreign to all his racial and religious traditions and exercising an enormous influence through their control of finance. A people bound together by devotion to their race, which had survived being scattered broadcast through the world and persecuted through the centuries.

Finding it impossible to earn his living as a labourer unless he accepted the teaching of Karl Marx, he managed to pick up a scanty living by painting and selling cards. Many of his sketches made at this time survive, and show considerable artistic talent. After a time he migrated from Vienna to Munich and found a lodging with a small working tailor's family. He continued to earn a small pittance by his painted cards, and began to devour all the books he could get out of the public library on history and politics. The tailor and his family have always remained his good friends, and have the pleasantest recollection of the courteous young Austrian who was adored by the children and made his good landlady anxious for his health by his omniverous reading on history and politics, which often continued through the night. He denied himself bread in order to have the means to visit the theatre, especially the great works of Wagner whom he revered and still reveres today.

When war broke out he got permission from Austria to join a German regiment, and went joyfully to fight for his beloved Fatherland; at last, he felt, he could do something for Germany. He was chosen for the dangerous task of dispatch carrier from the trenches, was twice decorated for valour, was wounded, and won the affection and admiration of his fellow soldiers. His final decoration, the Iron Cross of the First Class, was won for capturing single handed a small French force and leading them back to his own trenches by sheer bluff and personality. At the close of the war he was blinded by a gas attack and lost his sight for some time, and ultimately returned to Munich still in the army.

Munich like the rest of Germany was in a state of anarchy and after a desperate struggle had suppressed a Communist rising which committed the most brutal atrocities. Hitler was employed to lecture to the troops to correct the disaffection among them and show them the follies of Communism.

A few months after his return the disastrous terms of the Treaty of Versailles were made known to the Germans. They were received with a feeling of utter dismay which was soon succeeded by one of hopeless despair. Hitler in the meantime had discovered during his lectures to the soldiers where his real future lay, and determined to return to civilian life and devote himself to politics. He investigated all the various groups which had formed themselves, each sure that they had the means of saving Germany, but none of them had grasped what seemed to Hitler the only road to salvation. He alone conceived the bold idea of refusing to accept the exactions of the Treaty of Versailles; but how was he, an unknown soldier, to get his ideas to the people of Germany?

One night he read a pamphlet, which had been given him at a meeting, by a workman called Anton Drexler, and realised that here at last was someone who was thinking along the right lines. Next evening he went to a meeting of this "Deutsche Arbeiterpartei", a group of seven men with only 7.50 marks for funds, which was later to emerge as the National Socialist Party and sweep the whole of Germany.

Hitler inevitably became their leader and convinced them that the only chance of success was to hold public meetings. One of their first modest ventures was a meeting in the Munich Hofbräukeller, which held about 130 people. Hitler rose to address them and laid before them his whole plan for regenerating Germany. As he spoke the audience became wildly enthusiastic. He realised that he had the gift of oratory, and that by the use of this gift he could rouse Germany to action. The audience went out to spread everywhere the name of Hitler. Their future meetings grew larger and funds began to flow into the empty cash box. The Socialists became alarmed and decided to break up Hitler's meetings by physical violence; but he had foreseen this development and had called to him a handful of his old comrades of the battlefield and organised them as a militant body whom he called his Storm Troopers.

In November 1921 he decided to hold a great mass demonstration to test the real strength of the new movement, and if it succeeded to spread his organisation over the whole Reich. The Socialists determined that it should fail, and arranged to make an attack at the meeting which would smash the movement once and for all. The audience sat at little tables and refreshed themselves with beer while listening to the speaker. In Munich these beer mugs are heavy earthenware vessels. While Hitler was speaking the Socialists had been storing the empty mugs under their tables for ammunition, and at a given signal began hurling them at the heads of the audience and at Hitler who was standing on a table. During the rain of mugs Hitler never moved, and by some miracle was not hit. His Storm Troopers went promptly into action and though they were unarmed and their opponents had knives and other ugly weapons and greatly outnumbered them, the Storm Troopers after a desperate fight drove them out of the meeting. The scene was one of the wildest description and the hall was littered with broken mugs and smashed tables and chairs. Hitler calmly continued his speech where he had left off as if nothing had happened. Henceforth the Storm Troopers were known as "Storm Detachment" (Sturm Abteilung or SA.).

While the Nazi movement was spreading through Bavaria, the Bavarians were getting more and more dissatisfied with the central government in Berlin, and a movement was spreading to separate Bavaria from the Republic. The Bavarian Minister von Knilling appointed Herr von Kahr as Commissar with almost absolute power. Herr von Kahr broke off relations with Berlin and was joined in his revolt by the heads of the army and the police in Bavaria. There was talk of a march on Berlin, while Ebert was considering the possibility of ordering the army of the Republic to march on Bavaria. Von Kahr and Hitler were in agreement, but von Kahr hesitated and failed to push the rebellion. On November 9th 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff were marching through Munich at the head of their comrades and fellow members through cheering crowds, when they were stopped by a cordon of police who fired upon them. The scene was one of the wildest panic, the street was strewn with dead and wounded, eighteen of Hitler's comrades were killed, and Hitler was thrown down injuring his shoulder.

This attack by the police was followed up by the arrest of Hitler and many of his party.

At his trial he made a speech in which he unfolded his whole policy; a speech which made a great impression in Germany. "It is not you, Gentlemen", - he told the Court - "who pass judgment on us. We shall be judged before the eternal bar of history." He was condemned to five years imprisonment in the fortress of Landsberg, a sentence which was afterwards commuted to nine months, and was soon joined in prison by many of his followers who were allowed by the prison rules to mix together in the daytime. While there letters and presents poured in from all over Germany, but his organisation was rapidly falling to pieces without the presence of its leader. It was during his imprisonment that he dictated Mein Kampf to Hess.

When he left prison in December 1924 he had come to the conclusion that a revolution based on a coup d'etat did not provide a permanent foundation on which to build a new state, and determined to undertake the colossal task of converting the whole German people and obtaining power by their votes. In spite of being forbidden to speak in several of the German federal states, his movement made rapid progress, and returned larger and larger numbers of members to the Reichstag at each election.

 

Hitler & Hindenburg

The work of building up this great organisation was stupendous, and during elections he flew in a plane all over Germany speaking everywhere and organising his followers. Finally he had a large majority over any other party in the Reichstag, and Hindenburg conferred on him the post of Chancellor, on January 30, 1933. Hitler asked the Reichstag for absolute power for four years; this was granted, and afterwards confirmed by a plebiscite of the whole German people.

Placed in power, he did not follow the usual practice of Dictators and shoot his opponents. The more dangerous enemies of the new government were put in concentration camps, where they suffered no more hardships than the common soldier. Civil servants opposed to him, and Jewish professors and heads of institutions, were pensioned off at the full value they would have received in old age. Then began the vast task of re-organising Germany; the most bloodless revolution the world has ever seen had been accomplished.

One cannot read the story of Hitler's early life without realising that everything went to form his mind for his future task. Consciously his ambition was to become a painter, but his early absorption in history and geography pointed in another direction. As a young boy, he came to realise what it meant to be separated from Germany, and to live in an Empire which is largely dominated by alien Slavonic influences. He read a history of the war of 1870 when he was a boy, and asked himself, why did we not go to the help of the Germans? The answer was plain. Because although we are Germans, we are divided from our blood brothers; the peoples would have joined, but the outside influence of rival dynasties kept them apart. Can we not see in this deep impression the reason behind his resolve to unite Austria and Germany, and his determination to bring the Sudeten Germans back to their fatherland?

He has denounced the folly of conquering and subduing foreign peoples. He had a perfect example before him in his youth, in the endless struggles to subdue the turbulent slav populations of the Austrian Empire, which finally caused its destruction. He was horrified when he visited as a young man the Austrian parliament, and found it full of Slavs who were making long speeches in languages which only a few could understand, and whose racial hatreds finally boiled up into a free fight.

The great social reforms which he has carried out can in the same way be attributed to his early experience. His sufferings of poverty, uncertainty of employment, and starvation in Vienna, when he was left an orphan at eighteen and had to become a labourer, made a deep impression on his mind, and unconsciously again, fate was shaping his destiny, giving him by this harsh treatment an understanding and insight into the difficulties and struggles of the working classes, which he could never have had otherwise. He has fought and conquered for Germany the terrible disease of unemployment, remembering his own misery when he was workless, and the pressing anxiety of where the next meal was to come from.

Brought into contact with Communism, the accepted faith of his fellow workmen, he was faced at an early age with fundamental political problems. Communism aims at a class war which would split Europe horizontally and result in an international communist state. Hitler saw in nationalism an emotional force which could unite all the peoples of a nation in a common purpose of justice for all classes. Communism appeals to hate, and denies the national bond, while nationalism appeals to the natural good feeling between the members of the same community. Communism is therefore necessarily anti-Christian, and nationalism is Christian, so long as it is used as a motive for internal reform, and does not result, as it has done so often in the past, in the proof of patriotism being the extent of our hatred of other nations. Brought into intimate contact with Communism as an active political force, and not as a subject for discussion in the study, he learnt to hate it, and to hate the men who were exploiting the workmen for their own purposes. His contact with Communism was therefore a part of his training for his future task; still a boy in years, he had to choose between the risk of starvation or the acceptance of Communism, and he chose to suffer hunger rather than bow the knee to the god of hate and class war.

As a soldier in the battlefield, he was to learn the horror and the mad futility of war, and the wickedness of hatred between nation and nation. Patriotism, according to Hitler, means, thou shalt love the people of thine own nation as thyself. Patriotism according to the Peace treaties, means, thou shalt hate the people of other nations.

The solution of these fundamental problems was hammered out by the young Hitler in suffering, and the lessons learnt burnt into his soul. Most men who had endured what he had, would have joined the ranks of those preaching the gospel of hate; hatred of the rich and powerful, and hatred of the peoples of other nations. It is true that in Mein Kampf, he shows something of the old Adam, but the fires of suffering have burnt all dross out of his soul, so that he comes today before men with a message of Peace and goodwill.

We have many impressions of Hitler from those who have known him personally, but perhaps the most interesting is the one given by his jailer. The relation of jailer and prisoner is naturally a difficult one, and yet he speaks of Hitler's unfailing courtesy, and prompt recognition of the necessity for prison discipline. The jailer occasionally had difficulties with the young Nazis, who were indignant at their imprisonment, and chafed at prison rules. When trouble arose he had only to go to Hitler, who would say, "leave it to me", and everything was put right. He speaks of his unfailing cheerfulness, how he encouraged his followers, and kept them interested to break the monotony of prison life, and of his invincible courage in spite of the apparent wreckage of his party.

His kindly personality, simplicity, modesty and absence of all pretence are spoken of by everyone. When his old Munich landlady summoned up courage to call upon him, she had only to explain to the two S.S. men on guard that she had known Hitler in the old days, to have every door opened to her and to be greeted by Hitler as a dear old friend.

While Hitler has this charming personality, he is of the stern stuff of which leaders of revolutions are made. He stands apart and like all men of genius who have led great movements he is simple and direct, and puzzles and alarms the complex confused personalities of the ordinary diplomatist; yet anyone who will with an open mind study his speeches and watch his actions can learn to understand him. Dwelling among his beloved mountains he makes his decisions and carries them out swiftly and with absolute certainty.

He burns with one consuming passion, his love of Germany and the German people, rich and poor, old and young, and above all the children. "How wonderful", he has said, "are the children of Germany."

He feels bitterly her wrongs, the Treaty of Versailles and all that followed. The writer of Mein Kampf is there today, with its cynical exposure of European statesmanship, and its call for revenge, but he has found a better way. He has realised that the war and the infamous Treaty were symptoms of a deep rooted disease and that Europe must begin anew.

He bases his political creed on an idealised conception of nationality, and of race of which nationality is the flower. God, he tells us, has made different nations. Each nationality has something to contribute to civilisation but the value of the contribution lies in its being essentially national. Those who say that Hitler is out for the conquest of other peoples show a complete misconception of his beliefs. To introduce an alien element by conquest of another country is to injure your own. A race can only reach its highest perfection if it is kept pure, and a nation must work out its own salvation and must care above all else for its own people. Patriotism in its highest form means the complete subjugation of individual gain for the whole community. He believes that no alien element can be expected to work in with this ideal, and herein lies one of his main arguments against the Jewish community in Germany.

Instead of suppressing nationalities, the policy of the treaties which the League supported, he takes that deep emotion - love of country - and bends it to a new purpose, service to one's own people and peace with one's neighbours.

There are times when God in compassion for the self inflicted sufferings of men sends a man simple and direct in thought and inspired by one passion, to carry out an ideal which controls him. Hitler has been entrusted with the task not only of saving the German people, but of securing peace in a distracted Europe. Future generations will recognise him as the man who led Europe into the paths of peace.

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The Beleaguered City

In order to understand Hitler's denunciation of the Treaty of Versailles, it is necessary to realise the strategic position of Germany at the time he came into power, and to compare the map of Europe at that time with the map before the war. Germany is bounded by other countries, except along the Baltic, and if we proceed to trace this post-war frontier we shall find that the title given to this chapter was fully justified at that time.

We shall begin with the frontier facing France. Alsace and Lorraine, which had belonged to Germany since the war of 1870, were restored to France. These territories which contain a mixed French and German population, have changed hands more than once. Louis XIV seized them in time of peace, and they continued to be part of France after the close of the Napoleonic wars, to be regained by Germany in 1870. France never ceased to look forward to their recovery; the statues in Paris representing the two provinces being always draped in black. It is probable that if they had not been taken by Germany in 1870, the war of 1914 would have been confined to Eastern Europe. While the Treaty of Versailles was being drafted, Foch wished to have the whole of the Rhine

Map of Europe, 1914, pre-Versailles [University of San Diego, History Department]   Map of Europe, 1919, post-Versailles [University of San Diego, History Department]

Provinces added to France, and during their occupation after the Treaty was signed, attempts were made to agitate for their separation from Germany. The plebiscite taken in the Saar at the end of its occupation under the League, showed clearly that these provinces had no desire for separation, but they were included in the neutral zone, and German troops were forbidden to enter them. France built the Maginot line of forts within five miles of the frontier, armed with powerful siege guns able to throw shells twenty miles inside the German frontier. These forts extended from the Rhine to the borders of Luxembourg.

The Treaty of Versailles re-created the country of Poland out of Russian, German and Austrian territory, and in order to give Poland an outlet to the sea, presented her with a broad strip of land on the Vistula, ending in the town of Danzig, which was made a free city under the suzerainty of Poland and the League. This strip of territory cuts off East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Difficulties have arisen over Danzig, the population of which is more than 90% German, difficulties which have been increased by Poland building the new port of Gdynia in the neighbourhood, on Polish territory, to which her sea-going trade is being diverted. The Polish corridor contains a mixed population of Poles and Germans, and was given to Poland without a plebiscite. According to the German census of 1910, it contained a majority of Germans. A considerable section of Silesia, including three quarters of the valuable Silesian coal fields, was given to Poland in spite of a plebiscite in favour of retention by Germany. As this extensive minefield had been developed by German capital, and contained a considerable German population, this region has also been the source of endless difficulties. One of the causes of trouble is the low standard of living and wages of the Polish miner, wages which the German miner who was handed over has had to accept.

The Treaty of Versailles carved up the whole Austrian Empire, creating the new country of Czecho-Slovakia, which contained six different races over whom the Czechs, having a small majority, have ruled. Bohemia which, as can be seen from the map, cuts into the heart of Germany, was formerly part of the friendly Austrian Empire, but now belongs to Czecho-Slovakia. It has been a bone of contention between the Czechs and the Germans for centuries, contains a population one third German and two thirds Czech, and includes the important historical city of Prague. The German population suffered severely under Czech rule; the Czechs never having carried out the clauses in the Peace treaties designed for the protection of minorities. Czecho-Slovakia is a democracy, but a democratic government is no protection to an alien race in a permanent minority, and the Czechs kept their prisons full of German political prisoners.

It is generally admitted today that the commissioners who drew up the new frontiers showed very little wisdom or knowledge of the various peoples whose fate they were deciding in an arbitrary manner. They refused a plebiscite which had been promised by Wilson whenever it suited their purpose.

 

Map of Germany, 1933 [Völker, Staaten und Kulturen - ein Kartenwerk zur Geschichte; Georg Westermann Verlag]

If we now look at the geographical position of Germany as a whole when Hitler came into power, it is obvious that she had extensive frontiers on the other side of which were peoples who were far from friendly, not through any faults of the German people of today, but because of long enmity extending into the past. France and Germany had been foes since the days of Louis XIV both for racial and historical reasons, and France hastened, as soon as the war was concluded, to build up an army far more formidable than the one she had possessed in 1914, to make alliances with Poland and Czecho-Slovakia directed against Germany, and to lend these countries large sums to enable them to buy arms. In Bohemia, in place of the friendly Austrian Empire, Germany had the Czechs who were her hereditary foes, and resuscitated Poland was not too friendly to the Germans who assisted in carving up her territory in the 18th century. Behind Poland and Czecho-Slovakia lies the Soviet Republic which has two reasons for hating Germany: the racial reason that as Slavs they hate Germans; and the political reason that the Soviet is a Communist Government bitterly opposed to National Socialism, the Nazi revolution being just in time to prevent a Communist revolution in Germany. Finally, France, after the signing of the Treaty of Locarno, which seemed to give Germany some security, entered into an alliance with Russia which Czecho-Slovakia also joined. Czecho-Slovakia offered Bohemia to Russia as a base for her bombing planes, within 150 to 250 miles of every important city in Germany except Hamburg, and promised a free passage to the Soviet troops through her territory to attack Germany.

No one therefore who looks at the map can doubt the correctness of the title I have given to this chapter. The huge guns of the Maginot line can destroy the German towns to 20 miles behind the frontier, and it forms a military base for the invasion of the Rhine provinces; while a Russian fleet of bombing planes planted in Bohemia can destroy the cities of Germany. The invasion of the Ruhr by France in time of peace had shown Germany what to expect from her neighbours if she remained in this vulnerable position to the enemy without the gates.

In addition, at the time when Hitler came into power, the Communist vote had risen to 7 million, and the German people had already experienced the horrors of a Communist rising in Munich, Central Germany, the Ruhr Valley and in Hamburg. Horrors that would have been repeated all over Germany if Hitler had not acted promptly.

Germany's very existence depended on a highly centralised government; a stern internal discipline; the training to arms of the young men; the possession of munitions not inferior to her neighbours; and the organisation of the whole nation for one purpose, the preservation of the German people from attack. Germany is not in the position to attack, nor desirous of attacking any nation in Europe; but no nation could be expected to tolerate for long this policy of encirclement without taking measures for defence.

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National Socialism

Before describing National Socialism, it is necessary to discuss the ideas that inspired the political systems of the 19th century, which saw the rapid spread of democratic forms of government originating from the writers of the 18th century. Brought up from childhood in the belief that Democracy was the last word in perfect government I may be allowed to criticize it in my old age.

The stress of the war and the aftermath of war has led not only to the flight of Kings but the collapse of Parliaments and the rise to power of rulers from the people. Dictators govern or non-parliamentary regimes exist in Turkey, Russia, Poland, Germany, Italy and Spain, dictators who have risen to power by the sheer necessity of the situation. The average man, peasant or workman, is not interested in theories of Government. All he asks is law and order and a reasonable modicum of honesty and efficiency. The failure to obtain this minimum has resulted in the rise of Dictators, to replace anarchy and revolution by law and order.

The Government of our country, which has grown up through the centuries and like a patched old coat sits comfortably on the shoulders of John Bull, is not to be taken as a typical example of Democratic Government. Artificially created Democracies are very different.

A Democratic Government gives every adult citizen a vote for the election of a member of Parliament and from among the members of Parliament the Government of the day is chosen. He therefore has a part in the Government and the utmost freedom of opinion is necessarily allowed so that the elector can decide what he wants and vote accordingly.

The defect in Democracy is that while it gives the individual citizen certain powers and privileges it asks nothing from him in return for the benefit of the community. In fact the community has no organized conscious national life. The voter having recorded his vote has no further duties to the State than to keep the law and avoid the police. It is true the citizen may be called upon by the State to fight as a soldier, but in time of peace nothing is asked of him. Parliament may pass laws for the common good but they are administered by State officials. The only organized life with an ethical idea of service is centred round the Churches or voluntary organizations. The Democratic State having given the utmost tolerance to freedom of opinion leaves the citizen to act as best he can for his own aggrandisement. The State consists of separate disconnected units and is not a living organism. It has made a God of Intellect but left out Ethics. It is notorious that in continental Parliaments each Party is willing to sacrifice the common good to its own advancement, and that they are incompetent and apt to become corrupt.

We have been saved from these defects because centuries of tradition have planted in us certain instincts which cause us to regard the body politic as a whole and to pull together in times of crisis in defence of the Nation; but that does not necessarily happen in artificial Democracies.

Our constitution is so complex, with a Monarchy, with a House of Lords, with traditions and customs derived from the past, and with all kinds of influences flowing into the national life, that it cannot be compared with any other Democracy. We have above all traditions of service which come from the Aristocracy and landed classes of this country who, though deprived of power and to a great extent of wealth, still occupy the front pages as news, because of what they stood for in the past, and still in many instances stand for to-day. It is true the new rich and the more frivolous members of the Aristocracy have lowered the standard, but the best of the old families continue quietly their social duties. I can admire an old family who, like the Cecils, through generations have preserved a standard of public service, but I cannot admire a successful soap boiler.

To them we owe the fact that our public schools still carry on that ideal of service - though never expressed - to the State and the Empire, and the ruling classes trained in them still keep control of the government. It is not without interest that just as our public schools with their system of monitors and heads of games and houses are training boys to rule in the best sense of the word, so Hitler has found the need for the same idea in Germany and through the Hitler Youth Organisation is giving that training which is so essential and which has always been absent from the German schools.

The Established Church has also kept up a tradition of Christian conduct, and the Society of Friends has always set a high standard of public service. I remember visiting a linen mill at Belfast many years ago and being horrified to see the girls at the machines in a room full of steam, soaked to the waist, and with no opportunity of changing before going home in the bitter cold outside. I asked: "Are all your mills like this?" "All but one", was the reply, "but", with a shrug of the shoulders, "that belongs to a Quaker".

We can call our constitution a Democracy if we like, but it is modified by traditions drawn from the past which make it workable. All these traditions of national life are necessarily absent in Germany, because of her history, and have to be created.

We have another advantage owing to the fact that a stable though changing form of Government has existed so long in this country. Like pebbles in a stream, we have rubbed together until we are rounded and trained in toleration and moderation.

It was the absence of any idea of the State as an organized whole that led the thinkers of the 18th and early 19th century to try to plan a State in which the individual served the community. If by Socialism we mean the idea of the State as an organic whole to which the individual members must render service, it is as old as Plato's Republic, and certain early writers on Socialism, and Hegel in his Political Philosophy, developed this conception.

Democracy combined with the false interpretation of the Economics of Adam Smith into a rule of conduct, had reduced the people of this country to such a condition by the middle of the 19th century that if the State had not interfered by legislation, we would have committed race suicide!

Unfortunately for the advance of civilized communities Karl Marx, by means of an unsound economic theory, sidetracked the Socialist movement from its purpose of remodelling the whole State, into a class war by which the Proletariat was to seize all the means of production and eliminate the middle class. The movement towards a true Socialistic development of the State which we owe to Ruskin, Owen, Kinglery, and Disraeli, was directed into a class war which has produced red revolution in Russia and been barren of any productive results in this country. Social legislation has been passed by both the Conservative and Liberal parties, but since a separate Labour Party was formed, though twice in office, they have produced no results, the last progressive piece of legislation - the Housing and Unemployment Acts - having been passed by the Coalition Government under Lloyd George. The attempts to create a class party and a class war in this country have proved a failure.

The people of this country, tired of political strife, have now twice returned by large majorities a Coalition Government, not because they necessarily admire its capacity or efficiency but because they are determined not to trust the country or the Empire to those who lead the Labour Party and still mumble the ideas derived from Karl Marx. The Bovril of Communism mixed with luke warm water does not attract the majority of voters. The complaint is made that the youth of the country takes no interest in politics. They have too much sense.

The time has come when we must return to Plato and the conception of the State as an organic whole to which each citizen must give service, and the sacrifice of individual interests for the common good. We must remember that we profess Christianity and that the principles governing the relations of the individual to his fellows have been laid down for all time in the Gospels, and given us the right ideals on which to found a living organic State. This does not mean that we have to deny Democracy, but on the contrary endow Democracy with an ethical principle. We are not wanting as a community in ethical instincts and desire to benefit our fellow creatures, but the whole needs co-ordinating as a conscious ethic guiding the Government and the individual. Without such an ethic, Democracy demoralizes the politician and the Press. We need therefore to return to a genuine Socialism, that is, the conception of the State as an organic living entity demanding service and sacrifice of individual gain from its members, and ending class war and spoliation.

There are times in history when a great leader arises and sweeping aside all forms of Government establishes a personal rule. Such a crisis had arisen in Germany, and Hitler has become a great leader, but the main interest to the student is not his personal rule but the ideal of a State which he has evolved and is working out in Germany.

He is the product of all those, from Plato onwards, who have imagined the State as an organic whole consciously guided by an ethical principle and calling on its individual members to play their part each in his place in helping forward the ethical idea by which the State is guided. His originality lies in converting these abstract ideas into a living principle of life by substituting for the abstraction the State, the living reality - the German Nation.

The sufferings of the German people have made them ardent Nationalists. The Fatherland, crushed and trampled on by the Nations of Europe, suffering every humiliation, has become to the German people the one object of their devotion. The love of the Reich has become a living and consuming flame. Hitler has seized upon that and directed it to an ethical aim. If we wish to appeal to youth we must ask them for service and if need be sacrifice. Only in that way can we utilize their ethical inspiration, and so he has appealed to the youth of Germany. He will accept no class division; he will stamp out all class war. No man can ask more than to be a citizen of the German Nation, and it is as a member of the body corporate that Hitler addresses his appeal to him.

He has fused all parties together to cast them in a new mould. He has accepted the economic system of Germany as he found it, though he is modifying it in many ways by the action of the State, and while he has carried out many sound reforms profoundly modifying conditions in Germany, these are merely the outward and visible sign. He is aiming at a change of heart, a new ideal of action, a conversion of the German people, without which external machinery is of little use. Doubtless many of the experiments will fail and fresh plans be worked out, but as long as the ethical idea is there, reforms are easy which here would be difficult.

It must be remembered that the Continental Trades Unions are very different to ours, being almost entirely in the hands of political agitators. Obviously the existence of Trades Unions whose leaders were paid to promote class war, was intolerable to the Nazi idea, and Hitler substituted the organization called the Labour Front, with committees of masters and men elected by secret ballot, and State officials who act as overseers and have the last word. Most elaborate labour laws have been passed guarding the workman in every kind of way, and while wages are low the conditions of life are very much improved. Not only are full wages paid during all holidays but the "Strength through Joy" organization has brought to every workman the opportunity of attending concerts and theatres and of cheap holiday travel including sea voyages and visits to foreign countries. Two special 25,000 ton ships have been built and four others chartered for this purpose, and hiking hostels are provided everywhere.

Housing is being carried out on an enormous scale, both in town and country, and factories are not only being made sanitary but pleasant to work in with the provision of dining rooms and bathing facilities. There is still much distress in big cities and the most complete and remarkable voluntary association has been created to deal with this problem, while the "one pot meal" every month during winter has helped to provide funds. It may be truthfully said that in Berlin last winter no person went without sufficient food and clothing and enough coal to keep one fire burning. The Nazi organization puts at the service of the State a million and a half willing voluntary workers.

Hitler has said that a healthy State is built on the peasant, and Germany has over half a million peasant families cultivating their own land. Our peasants alas are landless. He has made the house and land the possession of the family for all time descending from father to son, and has made it illegal to mortgage the house and farm. Any destitute member of the family has the right to food and shelter in the ancestral home. Prices are fixed and the State organizes distribution. Good food is cheap and plentiful in Germany, yet the peasant is doing well. The middle man is retained for distribution but can no longer rig the market and ruin the farmer with low prices, and plunder the consumer.

The only way the traveller can judge internal prices is by what he pays in restaurants. Two of us made an excellent meal on roast venison with cranberry sauce, Swiss cheese, butter, brown bread and beer for a total of three and a half marks in Nuremberg.

When Hitler first got control there were six million unemployed in Germany. To-day there is a shortage of workmen, and Italian, Dutch and Polish workmen are being, brought in. Those for whom work could not be found during the first years were employed in road making, land reclamation and similar tasks. They had to move from place to place and so live in camp, and were necessarily under discipline to ensure order and train them to a form of labour which was new to many of them. Our plan of paying men the dole and allowing them to loaf in idleness is utterly abhorrent to the German mind. The employment of the unemployed on public works in this country was destroyed by the Trades Unions demanding standard rates of wages for unskilled labour. The cost was prohibitive. Clothed, fed and housed, and his family looked after, the German unemployed are glad to work. This has been described by our Labour Party as slave labour. No one would be more astonished than the German unemployed at such a description.

I shall deal in more detail with parts of this social re-organization in subsequent chapters, but I have said enough to show the general lines. They will make mistakes; but the team spirit is there and the determination to succeed. Our Policy under the false application of the teaching of Adam Smith was in the 19th century to put economic gain first. Hitler's policy has been to put the well being of the people first, to consider the race not the multiplication of goods. He has been rewarded by success in the field of economics.

Nothing has caused more criticism of the German revolution than their handling of the Jewish question. I do not propose to defend it, but give certain explanations which are worthy of consideration. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the whole business has been grossly exaggerated and active imaginations have been at work inventing unspeakable horrors. During the early days of the revolution brutalities were committed on both sides, many of Hitler's followers being shot down by Communists, and rightly or wrongly they hold in Germany that Communism is a Jewish revolutionary movement.

The hatred of the Jew on the continent is not confined to Germany. The anti-Jewish pogroms that have taken place in Poland were so dreadful that the Polish Government did not allow any news of them to leave the country, and there can be no doubt that Hitler, by bringing the whole matter under law and regulation, saved the Jews from massacre. It is difficult for us to understand this bitter hatred. We find the Jew a law-abiding, hard-working citizen, and have no complaint to make. It is doubtless true of the Jew as of all human beings, that good treatment makes a good citizen and bad treatment a bad citizen.

The only law passed by the Government dealing with the Jewish question, when Hitler came into power, was the Nuremberg Law dealing with marriage. There are to-day some 500,000 Jews in Germany but they are excluded from many professions and Government service. On the other hand they have their own cultural society, theatres and concerts and are protected from ill treatment by the Police.

Mixed up with this Jewish question is the racial question. The Nordic peoples differ from the Latin peoples in guarding jealously the purity of the blood. We have never in this country objected to intermixed marriages with Jews, but an officer in the army in India who marries a Hindu girl would have to resign his commission, while in the U.S.A. and South Africa etc. the slightest taint of negro blood means social ostracism.

In dealing with this difficult question I merely wish to point out that enmity to the Jew is not peculiar to Germany, and that it is better to regulate the Jewish position by law than to have outbreaks of fanaticism. True, Karl Marx was a Jew and rightly or wrongly, as I have said, Communism is regarded in Germany as being Jewish in origin and being organized by Jews.

The dismissal from their posts of distinguished men of learning, artists, musicians, scholars and men of science because they were of Jewish blood gave great offence among the intellectual classes. Art, science and learning recognizes no boundaries of race. What was not known in this country was that these men were offered full retiring pensions if they remained in Germany and that they had managed to fill a large preponderance of posts to the exclusion of Germans. It is true that our Government is doing its best to-day to exclude foreign musicians and actors from this country, a most indefensible proceeding which makes it difficult to criticize the action of Germany, but it was the dismissal given in the highest ranks of learning that shocked Europe and America. Every revolutionary political movement like every religious movement has its excesses and intolerances, and far too much has been made of their blunders. To-day we regard the French Revolution with all its horrors and excesses as marking a step forward in political history. It is only necessary to look back at contemporary writing in this country to realize we could not see the wood for the trees.

The quarrel with Rome was inevitable, because the Vatican will interfere in politics, and just as we had to fight the Vatican to a finish for two hundred years, so any strong Government which wishes to be master in its own home has sooner or later to face the opposition of Rome. We at any rate should understand and sympathize with the position of the German Government.

To us the whole idea of imprisonment for political opinions is abhorrent, but we do not hesitate to arrest and imprison thousands of prisoners without trial in India, and in Belfast to-day any Roman Catholic is liable to arrest and trial before a secret tribunal and can be imprisoned merely on "suspicion" without trial. Political prisoners are not peculiar to Germany. All continental countries, including Democratic Czecho-Slovakia and even France have their political prisoners and secret police.

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The Nazi Rallys at Nuremberg

Once a year, early in September, all eyes in Germany are turned to Nuremberg. The world at large takes an ever greater interest in this city as the years go by. It is here where the National Socialist Party holds its annual rallys. These are gatherings entirely different to similar events in the parliamentary democracies. The difference is not only to be found in the huge assemblies of the SA and SS men, the corps of political leaders, the Hitler Youth and the Labour Service but, at each gathering, the Führer lays down his programme of work for the coming year. The names given to these annual rallys are also characteristic. "The Victory of Faith", the "Triumph of Will", were the first two after the assumption of power. Early this year, the Führer had already assigned the title of "Rally of Peace" to the 1939 gathering.

I will endeavour to describe the impressions gained when in September 1937 I was given the opportunity of attending that rally.

As I sped towards the old city of Nuremberg, I tried to remember it as I had seen it many years ago, a perfect specimen of mediaeval Germany surrounded by its old walls and towers. How would the venerable city take to playing its part as the

Scriptorium comments: no, the desecration of Nuremberg was the work of the glorious Allied victors! By the end of the war, 90% of the old city was in ruins. [Stadtarchiv Nürnberg]

Mecca of the new revolution that was transforming Germany? Of one thing I was sure, that the German people under their new leader, with his sense of the artistic and his love of everything German, would not have done anything to desecrate this priceless treasure from the past.

There is a new Nuremberg, for Nuremberg is today, as it was in the middle ages, an important manufacturing centre; but it lies outside the city walls, and not even the railway has been allowed to enter and to spoil the old town. On leaving the station, the old walls are facing you looking like an illustration from Grimm's fairy tales. On the day of my arrival the battlements were decorated with the long red banners with a white disc and the black swastika in the centre, which Hitler designed for his party and which is now the flag of Germany. Beautiful in colour, the long banners draped the old grey walls, in perfect harmony, and they seemed pleased with this new decoration. It was of good omen, that the new revolution was so closely knit with the past of the German people and was not a garish and vulgar twentieth century invention. Hitler had not only chosen Nuremberg as the Mecca of the Nazi party because its people had been faithful to him in the early days of the movement, but also because he wanted to associate the revolution indelibly in the German mind with the past.

Walking through the streets of Nuremberg I saw only two varieties of decoration. The green branches of the pine, and the long red banners hung everywhere. Those who saw the decoration of Bond Street at the time of the Coronation will get some idea of the general effect.

The streets were crowded with people, and with the men of the S.A. in their brown uniforms, and the S.S. in their black uniforms, who had special charge of the crowd. No soldiers and hardly any police were visible anywhere. I was amused to read in an English newspaper from their special correspondent at Nuremberg that the streets were swarming with soldiers.

It so happened that I was so fortunate as to step out of the station just when the Führer was expected to pass by on his arrival. Both sides of the street were lined with a jolly crowd joking and laughing with the S.S. men in their black uniform, to whom had been given the task of holding them back. They stood about a yard apart with a leather band held between them to form the barrier, and with no weapon of any kind except a small dagger. There could be no question that it was a joyous crowd looking well fed. One day I mentioned to a working woman in this country that under the Nazi regime the German people were only allowed a quarter of a pound of butter a week each. She stared at me in astonishment and said "I have not eaten butter for years, I cannot afford it".

Presently as I stood waiting, some open cars went by containing Nazi officials who were duly cheered. Then there was a long pause which was broken by the passage of a motor bicycle belonging to the police, with a yellow flag which passed by to see that the road was clear, and then we heard the roar of "Heils!" in the distance coming nearer and nearer. The excitement of the crowd was infectious, at last I was to see the Führer, the man who held Germany in the hollow of his hand and commanded respect in Europe. His solitary open car

Scene from the 1933 Parteitag rally. Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg]

moving at about six miles an hour, accompanied with no escort, was approaching. Standing in the car beside the driver was a slim erect figure in brown uniform, with one hand resting on the windscreen and the other arm held out in the Nazi salute. He looked straight in front, his face serious and composed. We are accustomed in our processions to the smiles and bows of Royalty, but I imagine the immovable erect figure is derived from the tradition of the old Roman Generals when receiving a triumph.

I had read in our newspapers that Hitler never dared to move outside unless he was surrounded by an armed guard. Not only was he alone, but the S.S. men lining the street had no weapon to protect him.

But what of Hitler himself? I saw him many times afterwards talking with the officers of the S.S. and S.A. and speaking in the stadium, and tried to compare him with other great men I have seen in my life, men of strong personality as all such men must be. No man cares less for the display of power. When he received the march past of the S.A. and S.S. men in the old market square, he was dressed in a brown shirt, riding breeches and black riding boots without hat or coat. We are used to a display of gorgeousness on the part of generals riding on a charger wearing a magnificent uniform and covered with medals. Hitler's uniform did not differ from that worn by his S.A. men, and his only decoration was the decoration for valour - the Iron Cross of the First Class. It seemed inconceivable that this man in the brown shirt talking with his officers was the master of Germany.

His face is familiar to all of us from his photographs but they do not do him justice. I have never seen one that I liked; he eludes the camera which does not register what is most of interest in his face and expression. He is different to any man I have ever seen before. A flame seems to burn within that slim figure and to look out of his eyes. There is nothing of the fanatic in his expression, but a look of superhuman energy and intensity of purpose; the face of a man specially endowed with the capacity for power; his very simplicity and absence of ostentation strengthens the impression. Bonaparte for all his genius was a vulgar soul and clothed himself in Imperial robes and troubled himself about the details and the etiquette of a court. Such trivialities are impossible for Hitler. Studying his face we can understand those quick decisions which have astonished his followers and electrified Europe; decisions carried out with a surprising rapidity and efficiency. Like Bonaparte he is always in advance of other people and therefore takes them by surprise. Bonaparte had a habit much disliked by the opposing generals of arriving with his army twenty four hours before it was possible for the army to be there; if Hitler had the vulgar ambition for military conquest, he would be the most dangerous man in Europe to-day, because he would outmanoeuvre the generals, just as he has outmanoeuvred the diplomatists by the simplicity and directness of his approach to all questions; but he belongs to a new age in which such conquests are an anachronism, though the diplomatists of Europe living still in the past have not yet realised that fact, and therefore pile up armaments which compel Germany to do the same in self-defence.

I have not yet begun to tell what I saw in Nuremberg and the impression it made upon me, but in truth there is only one man in Nuremberg amid all these crowds - the Führer.

Everywhere one met with friendly faces and a charming welcome. The Germans are probably the only people in Europe who really like us, and admire us probably much more than we deserve. It is because of that very liking that when irritated by the attacks in our press, and by our public men, they at last turn on us and give us some of our own back again. Attlee speaking in the House of Commons calls Hitler a gangster, and a German newspaper accuses Baldwin of bawling like a street urchin. It is all very childish and stupid. As I have said, they like and admire us, and I defy anyone not to like them. We feel at home with them as we can never feel with a Frenchman or an Italian. I myself am a Scotsman, and it is perhaps truer to say that the Scotsman and the German always get on well together.

The three things which impressed me most during my stay in Nuremberg were the torchlight procession, winding through the streets, the long red banners glowing in the light from the torches; the meeting of the Politische Leiter in the great stadium at night; and the parade of the boys of the labour camps.

This is the part of the Nazi organisation which has attracted most attention in this country. Started on a voluntary basis before Hitler came into power, he at once realised its importance in training the youth of Germany to the idea of citizenship taught by the Nazi party, and its significance as symbolising the whole Nazi conception of the State.

At about 19 years of age every boy in Germany, whether he be rich or poor, "Cook's son, Duke's son, Son of a belted Earl", spends six months in a Labour camp with spade and pick reclaiming the waste soil of Germany to make it fit for cultivation, draining the land, improving the forests, planting trees, and doing all that is needed to develop the natural resources of Germany. They all live and work together, and so that there shall be no distinction between rich and poor, they are all limited to the same amount of pocket money, and like the English school boy the hamper from home is shared with everybody.

The fundamental ideas of National Socialism are all expressed in this organisation. The dignity of Labour, even of the roughest kind, if undertaken in the service of the Reich; the wiping out of the distinction between the bourgeoisie and the workman; and the union of the German people as members one with another. Incidentally it is giving Germany the most physically fit youth in the world.

Every year contingents are sent from every part of Germany to be received by Hitler in the great stadium at Nuremberg; they are all in a uniform of their own

RAD banner, in this case from the contingent "Horst Wessel".

with their knapsacks on their backs, and shouldering a brightly polished spade instead of a rifle. Each contingent has its own band and carries its own banners, the swastika banner, having on it a spade surrounded by a wreath of corn [actually, wheat; Scriptorium]. The stadium was packed with people when Hitler arrived; then we heard the music of the band of the first contingent and as they marched we all rose and saluted the flag. On passing Hitler they broke into the goose step, and then turning to the left, the spades flashing in the sun like mirrors, came in from the back of the stadium and formed up placing their knapsacks on the ground and seating themselves upon them. Contingent followed contingent, until the vast floor of the stadium was filled, then standing up they went through the military salute with the spade instead of the rifle, and stood at ease with both hands resting on the handle of the spade. All these movements were carried out by each section at the word of command with military precision; as the one hand came down upon the other on the spade handle, it rang out as one clap. The neatness with which they performed all these movements was repeatedly applauded by the audience, whose enthusiasm and interest in the boys made me think of a collection of British parents at a school cricket match. The uniforms, the bands, the banners, and the absolute precision of movement on word of command are all intended to show that the glamour which surrounds preparations for war can equally well surround service in the cause of peace. Before dispersing the boys chanted a litany of dedication to the Reich, and in memory of the dead of the great war, written by themselves. Hitler in his speech said that this was the greatest demonstration for peace which the world had ever seen. When he said "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Eine Gemeinschaft, Eine Kraft", the whole audience rose and thundered applause.

Later in the day I saw some of these boys, brown and sturdy, marching back to camp, singing as they went. The streets were lined with people laughing, cheering and throwing flowers and packets of sweets. As I watched them I could not help thinking of the pale-faced, underfed and underdeveloped boy in our great cities, loafing at a street comer with a fag in his mouth. These German boys, though doubtless full of fun on occasions, have serious faces, inspired by an ideal of service to their fatherland, and ready if necessary to die in her defence. The Führer is their hero.

My last vivid memory is of what took place at the meeting at night in the stadium when Hitler addressed the Politische Leiter. We were sitting in darkness, when

"Cathedral of Light" over the grandstand, Zeppelin Field, Nuremberg 1937

suddenly shafts of light shot up all round the stadium, meeting over our heads and forming a temple of luminous pillars symbolising the Reich. Then a soft light fell on the back of the stadium, and we saw, rising into sight, descending the steps, and moving slowly between the ranks massed on the ground, men carrying the long red Nazi banners, the spear points of the poles glancing in the light. Very slowly they moved towards the front of the stadium, symbolising the flow of the life stream of the German people, the audience observing an absolute silence. When they had come to rest, we all rose and sang Deutschland über Alles and the Horst Wessel song. Then the trumpets sounded and Hitler began his speech.

In one part of the stadium was a tragic little group, Austrians, exiled from their land because of their political beliefs, who greeted Hitler with cries of "Österreich grüßt den Führer''. One day standing in the street, I found myself next to an Austrian lady. Among the laughing crowds she was silent, her eyes filled with tears. She turned to me and said in English, "I have never seen the Führer before - I think my heart is breaking".

 

 

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The Foreign Policy of Germany
 

Before explaining the foreign policy of Germany it is necessary to describe briefly the mental attitude of the Nations of Europe towards each other, as expressed by their Press and their politicians, - an attitude that has been clearly revealed by all that has happened in connection with the Spanish civil war. This civil war has inevitably resulted in different nations taking sides, Germany and Italy supporting Franco, and Russia and France the Government in Madrid, while in this country both sides are represented. From the beginning of the civil war armament manufacturers in all countries have been busy supplying munitions to both sides. In addition to munitions thousands of volunteers have poured into the country, more especially from Italy where the people and the Government are both violently pro-Franco. Our Government, by setting up the non-intervention committee have tried to restrain the flood of armaments.

Germany was the first to propose that all Governments pledge themselves to restrain to the best of their ability the entrance into Spain of volunteers, and after considerable delay the non-intervention committee adopted that policy.

Since the date when that pledge was given both Germany and Italy have been repeatedly accused by the French and English Press and by prominent politicians, of having broken faith in this matter, on no evidence except the excited statements of the Madrid Government, and the rumours collected and transmitted as facts by the journalists.

The most outrageous statements have been published, from the accusation that the bombing raid on Guernica was ordered from Berlin, to the accusation by Litvinoff that the Italian Government were responsible for the pirate submarines.

Anything in the way of unreliable rumours can be excused to the Madrid Government, suffering from war hysteria, but the accusations in our Press and by prominent politicians are a different matter.

Let us probe a little deeper into this mental attitude of distrust. France has busied herself making "mutual security" Pacts and lending large sums for the purchase of arms to various nations, so as to secure an overwhelming combination of force directed against Germany. The assumption underlying this policy is that owing to the rapacious instincts of Germany, Peace can only be kept by the threat of war, and by collecting on one side the biggest battalions. Our military alliance with France is made on the assumption that the German Nation is ready at any moment to make an unprovoked aggressive attack on France, an action of which the German Nation has never been guilty.

The same atavistic conceptions of the relations between nations is to be found in the League Covenant itself. In that Covenant the Nations solemnly pledge themselves to refer disputes to the League and accept the League's decision, and even if this prove impossible, to delay war for so many months. Yet in Articles 10 - 16 it is assumed that the responsible Governments of these Nations are capable at any time of making unprovoked attacks on each other and therefore according to the suppositions of the League Policy, Peace can only be preserved among these treacherous ruffians by organizing under the League an overwhelming military force composed of a similar collection of scoundrels.

If the members of the League cannot be trusted, the mutual security pacts are worthless, as all agreements and arrangements between people or nations with the mentality of crooks is unreliable.

I do not propose to be led here into a discussion of the complex and highly disputatious question of Japan in Manchuria and Italy in Abyssinia, but in so far as Europe is concerned, since the formation of the League of Nations only three cases of unprovoked aggression have taken place in Europe, - the seizure of Vilna by Poland, of Memel by Lithuania and the occupation of the Ruhr by France.

That wars may arise in Europe is quite possible. The Treaties of Versailles and Trianon have sown the seeds of numerous wars, but the first step towards Peace is that Nations should accept and believe the honest intention and desire for Peace and for fair play of other nations. That we have departed so far from this reasonable attitude is not due to the peoples of Europe, but to their Press and their politicians.

If I print in a newspaper that Mr. Jones is a liar and a treacherous scoundrel Mr. Jones is able to bring an action for libel, but there is no law of libel for Nations or the rulers of Nations, and the most that can be done is for the aggrieved Government to demand an apology. When a very distinguished politician calls Hitler a gangster in the House of Commons there is no redress.

Evil speaking, lying and slandering is specially forbidden in the Prayer Book but apparently it does not apply to Nations or the Governments of Nations. When M. Blum made a speech while still Prime Minister, in which he promised Czechoslovakia that in case of an unprovoked aggression by Germany, France would declare war, he assumed that an unprovoked aggression was just the kind of thing that Germany would indulge in. We have been told in the French Press that Germany intends to make war on Czechoslovakia, that next spring she intends to attack France, that she is preparing for war against Russia to conquer and annex the Ukraine.

I have discussed this mental attitude at some length because it is so universal that it is assumed as a matter of course, and the grossest insults against a friendly Power are allowed in Parliament with no protest from our minister of foreign affairs.

In discussing, therefore, the foreign policy of Germany, I am handicapped by the reply that Hitler in his speeches is telling lies to deceive Europe. It is no use stating that his foreign policy is thoroughly understood and accepted by the German people. The reply is that they are ordered with the dread of imprisonment to deceive foreigners, and quotations torn from the context and taken from Mein Kampf are given as proof of their duplicity. No one in Germany, including Hitler himself, regards the extreme foreign policy in Mein Kampf as a guide to German foreign policy to-day.

Let me in spite of these disadvantages do my best to explain.

We have seen that the Nazi movement is one welding the German people into a living organic State developing their own nationality and culture.

From this devotion to their own nationality comes a respect for other nations. Hitler expressed the faith within him when he said God has created different nations that each should fulfil its own life and culture as its contribution to civilization. He therefore regards the conquest of another Nation as a crime against the national idea, and territory so acquired as a source of weakness to the conquering Nation, because alien elements are introduced into the national life and the conquered people have to be held in subjection, thus destroying their right to fulfil their own national life. He points out that Europe has been engaged for centuries in territorial conquests and in the end the nations have retained their original boundaries.

He regards war for territorial conquest in Europe as a crime against civilization and a useless and unwise expenditure of force. I believe that if Alsace and Lorraine were offered to Germany as a gift she would refuse. He therefore quite truthfully says he cannot conceive of any possible cause for quarrel with France.

On the other hand the German Nation is intensely interested in the conditions under which Germans are living under alien rule, and it has long been obvious that the Germans in Austria and the Germans in the Sudeten German area would ultimately become members of the Reich. Wherever Germans are living they wish them to become converted to the Nazi conception of a State, but that does not mean disloyalty to the people among whom they dwell. On the contrary it will make them better citizens.

There is nothing aggressive towards other Nations in the Nazi faith, and many passages in Mein Kampf have been misunderstood because Hitler is discussing the German people in alien lands.

This conceptions of the true attitude of the German Nation to other Nations is thoroughly understood in Germany. If we examine the foreign policy of Germany, we find this new conception running through their political action. Hitler has introduced a new idea of the relations between countries in his Peace Pacts, a Treaty between two neighbouring States not to make war on each other for a term of years. This Treaty contains no obligations to act as allies against other Nations. It is the only genuine Peace Treaty ever suggested, all other Treaties being alliances for purposes of war. This idea is transforming the whole political situation in Europe.

Germany will never sign again a Treaty like the Treaty of Locarno which pledged the members to war under certain circumstances, nor join the League of Nations while Article 16 is operative. She alone of all Nations in Europe is free from obligations to make war under certain circumstances. The extent to which we are committed no citizen of this country knows.

Germany has offered these Peace Pacts to all her neighbours including ourselves. In addition Germany has agreed to a navy only one third the size of ours, and has pledged herself to respect the neutrality of Holland, Belgium and Switzerland. She has established very friendly relations with Italy as they both dread the spread of revolutionary Communism, but she will form no Treaty or Alliance involving possibilities of war.

Germany is very far removed in her mentality from a Pacifist policy. She believes in armed national defence and quick reprisals to an outrage like the bombing of the "Deutschland", but her conception of the right relations between the Nations of Europe is so new and the mental attitude of the other European politicians towards each other so atavistic that it is a difficult mental gulf for them to cross, and yet it is plain ordinary common sense.

A striking instance of German diplomacy is the agreement that she has made with Belgium. Under the Treaty of Locarno, France and England were pledged to go the assistance of Belgium if attacked, and Belgium was equally obliged to go to their assistance. France and England proposed to Belgium the renewal of the old arrangements but Hitler dropped an explosive bomb into the negotiations by announcing that Germany was prepared to pledge herself to protect the neutrality of Belgium without any conditions. The Belgians being astute diplomatists used this to compel France and England to drop the clause requiring assistance from Belgium in case they were attacked, and France proceeded at once to spend vast sums on a line of forts between herself and her old ally. The Treaty between Germany and Belgium has now been ratified. Germany pledges herself not only to respect Belgian neutrality but to go to her defence if she is invaded, thus protecting her from an act of aggression by France. As the Daily Express says, the new Independence of Belgium is Independence from France.

Germany has entered into the closest relations of friendship with Italy, and Yugoslavia has signed a Peace Pact with Italy and Bulgaria on the German model. Bulgaria has signed a Treaty of Friendship and of arrangement for mutual arbitration with Turkey, and Turkey has signed a Peace Pact on the German model with Persia, Iraq and Afghanistan. We alone have failed to realise the implications of a Peace Pact, and have shown more hostility to Germany since we signed it than we did before.

In none of these Treaties is there a hint of an alliance for purposes of war.

The Pax Germanica now extends from the Channel to the Baltic, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, and to the frontiers of India.

Ultimately the Peace Pacts will result in the denunciation of the mutual security pacts. Poland having signed a Peace Pact both with Germany and with Russia is getting restive about her mutual security pact with France, which she realises is an obligation that might force her into war against a friendly neighbour.

The great mass of mankind ask for Peace and security abroad, and law, order, and efficient government at home.

Alone among European nations by her home and foreign policy Germany is securing this for the peoples of Europe and therefore the smaller nations are clustering round Germany.

There is another aspect of this question that requires to be dealt with before leaving it.

It is probably true that in 1914 the outbreak of war was very largely due to those in military command in the various countries involved. The last serious war in Europe had been in 1870. It was quickly over, the loss of life was according to our present standards insignificant, and it did not profoundly disturb the economics of Europe or even of France. Those in command of the armies of Europe in 1914 envisaged a war like that of 1870 and if they did not deliberately promote war, did nothing to avert it. After all war is a soldier's business.

To-day the situation is very different. Those in responsible command in Europe dread the idea of war, as they realize from their intimate knowledge what a fearful business it will be. The demand for war comes not from the Totalitarian States, not from the dictator or the soldier, but from the parties of the left in the Western Democracies. The whole policy of France was formerly directed to the oppression of Germany and the creation of a divided Europe, and the danger of France setting fire to Europe was much increased by having a party of the left in power including the Communists.

Daladier had to break with the Communists before he could get his Peace Pact signed.

Athens we know was forced into the Syracusan war by the mob, and to-day it is the parties of the left who are always clamouring for war. They work themselves into a state of hysteria over the sensational, unverified and one-sided statements published by the Press, and pass resolutions at public meetings urging war on the Government.

At the end of the Abyssinian campaign I was present at a meeting of the Council of Action with Mr. Lloyd George in the chair, a body which consists of Nonconformists and Liberals. They carried a resolution with one dissentient vote, which I gave, in favour of a blockade of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea by our fleet. This would not only have meant war with Italy but as Italy was already in possession of Abyssinia, would have meant serious complications with other Powers including the U.S.A.

At a meeting of the Labour Party not long ago they carried a resolution in favour of our expenditure on armaments because, the leaders explained, if returned to power they would require these armaments to make aggressive war on nations like Germany whose form of Government they did not approve, or undertake ventures like attacking Italy or Japan.

The absurdity of their attitude towards the use of bombing planes by Japan is that we are building a huge fleet of bombing planes to use in exactly the same way if there is war in Europe, the proposals of Germany to limit the use of bombing planes to the actual battle areas having been rejected or at any rate ignored by our Government.

As General Goering said when addressing the war veterans, "I believe that those who rattle the sabres have not participated in war."

In pre-war days we used to complain of the German Emperor rattling the sabre. To-day the rattling is done by the Labour leaders in England, and the real danger of war in Europe would be the success of the Labour Party in a general election. While pretending to be in favour of peace they are the firebrands that might set Europe alight.

It is madness to have the mob of the left attacking and insulting Nation after Nation in public meetings, and our foreign office entering into commitments in Europe unless we are prepared at once to introduce conscription. We sent our half trained boys to fight trained soldiers in 1914 with the result that in the war of attrition that Earl Haig was always talking about three English soldiers were killed for one German. Is the same slaughter of our youth to take place again? Why can we not go quietly about our lawful occasions and leave other Nations alone?

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England and Germany

In regard to Anglo-German relationship there has existed no reason for complaint during the last twenty years. The Germans have made a number of approaches with a view to establishing a better and closer understanding but all without avail. There is no evidence to show that these German approaches were not made honestly and fairly. I will quote only two examples from a number of such statements. The first is the relative passage in the Führer's speech of April 28, 1939, when he stated:

 

      "During the whole of my political activity I have always expounded the idea of a close friendship and collaboration between Germany and England. In my Movement I found innumerable others of like mind. Perhaps they joined me because of my attitude in this matter. This desire for Anglo-German friendship and cooperation conforms not merely with sentiments which result from the racial origins of our two peoples, but also to my realization of the importance for the whole of mankind of the existence of the British Empire. I have never left room for any doubt of my belief that existence of this Empire is an inestimable factor of value for the whole of human cultural and economic life. By whatever means Great Britain has acquired her colonial territories - and I know that they were those of force and often brutality - nevertheless I know full well that no other Empire has ever come into being in any other way, and that in the final resort it is not so much the methods that are taken into account in history as success, and not the success of the methods as such, but rather the general good which the methods yield. Now there is no doubt that the Anglo-Saxon people have accomplished immeasurable colonizing work in the world. For this work I have a sincere admiration. The thought of destroying this labour appeared and still appears to me, seen from a higher human point of view, as nothing but the effluence of human wanton destructiveness. However, this sincere respect of mine for this achievement does not mean foregoing the securing of the life of my own people. I regard it as impossible to achieve a lasting friendship between the German and Anglo-Saxon peoples if the other side does not recognize that there are German as well as British interests, that not only is the preservation of the British Empire the meaning and purpose of the lives of Britishers, but also that for Germans the freedom and preservation of the German Reich is their life purpose. A genuine, lasting friendship between these two nations is only conceivable on the basis of mutual regard. The English rule a great Empire. They built up this Empire at a time when the German people were internally weak. Previously Germany had been a great Empire. At one time she ruled the Occident. In bloody struggles and religious dissentions, and as a result of internal political disintegration, this empire declined in power and greatness and finally fell into a deep sleep. But as this old empire appeared to have reached its end, the seeds of its rebirth were springing up. From Brandenburg and Prussia there arose a new Germany, the second Reich, and out of it has grown at last the German People's Reich. And I hope that all English people understand that we do not possess the slightest feeling of inferiority to Britishers. Our historical past is far too great for that!
      England has given the world many great men, and Germany no fewer. The severe struggle for the maintainance of the life of our people has in the course of three centuries cost a sacrifice in lives which far exceeds that which other peoples have had to make in asserting their existence.
      If Germany, a country that was for ever being attacked, was not able to retain her possessions, but was compelled to sacrifice many of her provinces, this was due only to her political misdevelopment and her impotence as a result thereof. That condition has now been overcome. Therefore we Germans do not feel in the least inferior to the British Nation. Our self-esteem is just as great as that of an Englishman for England. In the history of our people, now of approximately two thousand years standing, there are occasions and actions enough to fill us with sincere pride.
      Now if England cannot understand our point of view, thinking perchance she may look upon Germany as a vassal state, then our love and friendly feelings have indeed been wasted on her. We shall not despair or lose heart on that account, but - relying on the consciousness of our own strength and on the strength of our friends - we shall then find ways and means to secure our independence without impairing our dignity.
      I have heard the statement of the British Prime Minister to the effect that he is not able to put any trust in German assurances. Under the circumstances I consider it a matter of course that we no longer wish to expect him or the British people to bear the burden of a situation which is only conceivable in an atmosphere of mutual confidence. When Germany became National Socialist and thus paved the way for her national resurrection, in pursuance of my unswerving policy of friendship with England, of my own accord I made the proposal for a voluntary restriction of German naval armaments. That restriction was, however, based on one condition, namely, the will and the conviction that a war between England and Germany would never again be possible. This wish and this conviction is alive in me today."

Secondly, in Mein Kampf there are many long references to Great Britain, and all of them are couched in tones of great appreciation. Hitler says that if German statesmen had had sufficient foresight to conclude an alliance with England early in the twentieth century, as Japan did in 1904, there would have been no Great War. Another important mistake made by German diplomats was to underestimate the fighting strength of the British Empire. Britain's total effectives were calculated in the basis of her standing army, a most fatal mistake. In this connexion Hitler writes:

 

      "The fact that England did not possess a national army proved nothing; for it is not the actual military structure of the moment that matters, but rather the will and determination to use whatever military strength is available.
      England has always had the armament which she needed. She always fought with those weapons which were necessary for success. She sent mercenary troops to fight as long as mercenaries sufficed; but she never hesitated to draw heavily and deeply from the best blood of the whole nation when victory could be obtained only by such a sacrifice.
      And in every case the fighting spirit, dogged determination, and use of brutal means in conducting military operations have always remained the same.
      But in Germany, through the medium of the schools, the Press and the comic papers, an idea of the Englishman was gradually formed which was bound eventually to lead to the worst kind of self-deception. This absurdity slowly but persistently spread into every quarter of German life. The result was an undervaluation for which we have had to pay a heavy penalty.
      The delusion was so profound that the Englishman was looked upon as a shrewd business man, but personally a coward even to an incredible degree. Unfortunately, our lofty teachers of professorial history did not bring home to the minds of their pupils the truth that it is not possible to build up such a mighty organisation as the British Empire by mere swindle and fraud.
      The few who called attention to that truth were either ignored or silenced. I can vividly recall to mind the astonished looks of my comrades when they found themselves personally face to face for the first time with the Tommies in Flanders. After a few days of fighting the consciousness slowly dawned on our soldiers that those Scotsmen were not like the ones we had seen described and caricatured in the comic papers and mentioned in the communiqués."

Soon after the War there was a widespread movement in Europe which had as a leitmotif the liberation of India. On this point Hitler writes in Mein Kampf:

 

      "I remember well the childish and incomprehensible hopes which arose suddenly in nationalist circles in the years 1920-21, to the effect that England was just nearing its downfall in India.
      A few Asiatic mountebanks, who put themselves forward as 'the champions of Indian Freedom', then began to peregrinate throughout Europe and succeeded in inspiring otherwise quite reasonable people with the fixed notion that the British World Empire, which had its pivot in India, was just about to collapse there. They never realised that their own wish was the father of all these ideas.
      Nor did they stop to think how absurd their wishes were. For inasmuch as they expected the end of the British Empire and of England's power to follow the collapse of its dominion over India, they themselves admitted that India was of the most outstanding importance for England.
      Now in all likelihood the deep mysteries of this most important problem must have been known not only to the German-National prophets but also to those who had the direction of British history in their hands. It is down right puerile to suppose that in England itself the importance of India for the British Empire was not adequately appreciated. And it is a proof of having learned nothing from the World War and of thoroughly misunderstanding or knowing nothing about Anglo-Saxon determination, when they imagine that England could lose India without first having put forth the last ounce of her strength in the struggle to hold it.
      Moreover, it shows how complete is the ignorance prevailing in Germany as to the manner in which the spirit of England permeates and administers her Empire.
      England will never lose India unless she admits racial disruption in the machinery of her administration (which at present is entirely out of the question in India), or unless she is overcome by the sword of some powerful enemy. But Indian risings will never bring this about.
      We Germans have had sufficient experience to know how hard it is to coerce England. And, apart from all this, I as a German would far rather see India under British domination than under that of any other nation."

March 7th 1936, a Most Important Date

Both in Germany and in England accounts have been published of the drafting of the Treaty of Locarno and what happened afterwards up to the fateful day of March 7th 1936. Both parties have quoted selected documents and both have produced a convincing case in favour of quite opposite conclusions. The patriotic Englishman is bound to accept our statement without question and the patriotic German is equally bound to accept the German statement. Germany's opponents will always say that she broke the Treaty of Locarno without justification and without warning. The German reply which is equally convincing is that by signing the Franco-Russian Treaty, France destroyed the Treaty of Locarno, and had full and fair warning of the view Germany took.

These discussions lead nowhere. It surely could not be expected that a rearmed Germany, arriving once more to a proud and free national consciousness, would long tolerate a frontier undefended and lying under the French guns of the Maginot line.

We have only to imagine ourselves to have been defeated by a French coalition, and as a result being forbidden to have any ships of war in the Channel, which was permanently occupied by the French fleet. I fear that whatever treaties we had signed, if we saw the opportunity of a surprise recovery we would take it and always glorify that day though we had broken the most solemn of treaties.

There are situations which collapse almost by a law of nature and ordinary rules and regulations are swept away.

It is evident that the humiliating Treaty of Locarno signed by an unarmed Germany, helpless under an armed France, could not be accepted for all time by an armed Germany, nor would they have tolerated long a ruler or a government that took no steps to occupy the neutral zone.

To appeal to France, Belgium and the League for the right of Germany to defend her own frontiers was useless. I believe the people of this country if appealed to would have responded, but the Foreign Office would have refused and the obedient Press supported them.

To denounce the Treaty of Locarno and announce that on a certain day German troops would march in, inevitably meant war, but what would happen if possession was taken without notice and Europe woke up one morning to an accomplished fact?

The risks of the plan adopted by Hitler were enormous. Only a formal occupation was possible and he could not know how many soldiers France had concealed in her underground forts, while the guns of the forts themselves could cause appalling destruction.

The German army was neither trained nor equipped up to the French standard, and it was known that the French military command had been urging the Government to make a "preventive war" on Germany, to annihilate her half trained troops and settle the German question for all time.

To move large masses of troops up to the edge of the neutral zone would have attracted attention, and therefore it had to be a formal occupation with a few thousand men whom France could at once have overwhelmed. The risks were so great that I believe only one man in Germany had the courage to put it in practice - the Führer.

The plan having been decided on it was essential that the utmost secrecy be preserved. If it had leaked out prematurely France would at once have sent troops into the neutral zone. Therefore no preparations were made for the reception of the troops in the frontier towns. The success with which the secret was kept - which must have been known to hundreds of people - speaks highly for German loyalty and discipline.

The people of the Rhine towns had endured for years the hard rule of the French officers and the black troops. Only in our section of occupation were the people treated with decency and humanity.

That terror was gone, Germany was rearming, the message of hope had been received. National Socialism was triumphant, their boys were being called up proud to be trained to defend their Fatherland, but they still lived in a no man's land, dominated by the French guns and the armies of France that in a few hours could ravage a defenceless people.

The whole situation is so remote from our experience, surrounded by the sea, that it is difficult for us to realize what it meant to live in the undefended territory so recently freed from the troops of France. Across that field, at the end of that road is France, armed France, and we are here defenceless. We can imagine their fear, knowing that concealed in those innocent looking green fields are the colossal siege guns waiting ready to blow to pieces their cities and villages.

Without hope and never free from fear the days drag on and no deliverance comes. What is the Führer doing? Is the watch on our beloved Rhine never to be renewed? And then comes the memorable day to be for all time glorious in German history - the 7th of March. There is the tramp of feet, the gleam of the sun on bayonets, soldiers are coming. Can it be the French? But no they are coming from Germany, we see the Swastika banner. It is impossible, it is unbelievable, they are our soldiers, and that night German sentries looked down once more on the sacred river, the Rhine.

And then after joy came the terror of suspense. What will France do? At any moment we may hear the scream of shells from the Maginot line. At any moment French troops may come harrying, burning, destroying.

I often wonder how Hitler endured those hours. He had thrown down a challenge to all Europe. He had played with the dice such a game with fortune as had never been played in the history of the world before. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon he had his armies with him, but Hitler occupied the neutral zone with a mere handful of men, in face of the French army of 500,000 men on a Peace footing. He won and not one shot was fired, one shot that would have set all Europe in a blaze.

All Germany waited in an awful breathless suspense. Then came the news that France had appealed to the League, and in 24 hours the central point of European politics passed from Paris to Berlin. Hitler had secured the initiative and has held it ever since.

What happened during those hours is still a profound secret, but there can be no question that according to the articles of the Treaty of Locarno Germany had committed an act of "flagrant aggression" and if asked by France we were pledged to war. It is also equally certain that if the Baldwin Government had attempted war in such a cause they would have been out of power in a week.

Hitler chose the occasion of the occupation of the neutral zone to make a speech on the Foreign Policy of Germany, and this is the most important state document since the Treaty of Versailles.

The speech which I print as an appendix will be found to be a very broad and statesman-like treatment of the whole situation in Europe.

The definite offers made to France and Great Britain would, if they had been accepted, have secured the peace of Europe. Hitler suggested a neutral zone on both sides of the frontier, and a peace pact between Germany, France and Belgium to be guaranteed by England and Italy, and an air pact to prevent the danger of sudden attacks from the air.

He also offered non-aggression pacts with the states bordering Germany on the east, and stated his willingness to rejoin the League of Nations.

These offers were rejected by the governments of France and Great Britain, our reply being the forming of a military alliance with France against Germany, and the questionnaire.

As none of these offers were accepted, they are no longer binding on Germany, and Germany will not now rejoin the League until it is completely reformed and Article 16 abolished.

The good understanding with the Czechs which Hitler offered has now been accomplished. From the first Hitler has said that he had no quarrel with the Czechs but only with Benes. If Benes had accepted Germany as his natural ally from the beginning, for which there were ample geographical and economic reasons, instead of allying Czecho-Slovakia with France and the Soviets against Germany, the whole history of Czecho-Slovakia would have been different.

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The Real Enemy of Europe

In the former chapters I have tried to show that Germany is engaged in building up a state on new and original lines which is entirely her own affair, whether we like it or not, has no aggressive designs on any other country and wishes to be left alone to develop her internal economy and external trade. She is also quite willing to continue to pay the salaries of Protestant Pastors and Roman Catholic Priests on condition that they leave politics alone and do not use the pulpit to attack the Government.

This being her policy there seems no reason why other Nations and other ideologies should not have left her alone. She is, it is true, strongly armed but so are her neighbours and they began it.

After the threat of war by both France and Great Britain over the Sudeten German question, which was not the business of either of us, she naturally fortified her French frontier, an essential net of defence. As far as we are concerned as we had fallen far below the standard of other countries it was in an uncertain world, but it is obvious that these armaments are not directed against Germany unless our intention is a war of aggression. Nor is Germany arming against us. She has no cause of quarrel with us and no reason to believe that as long as we have a responsible Government in spite of the continued attacks in our Press and by certain politicians, that she has any reason to fear hostility on our part. She is not looking towards France and England but is looking across the plains of Poland at a much more dangerous enemy. The Soviet with 2,000,000 men on a Peace footing under arms, spent last year £ 1,000 millions on additional armaments and has behind her an unlimited supply of man power in Asia.

On the contrary while showing occasional nervousness at our expenditure on armaments, which if a popular front coalition came into power would be directed against her, she realises that all the armed forces of Germany, France, Italy and England may be needed to rescue Europe from an Asiatic invasion more formidable than any of the invasions of the past.

I myself share her confidence in our peaceful intention.

To-day Germany is no longer anxious to keep a watch on the Rhine, but on the Dneiper. The suggestions therefore of a mutual reduction of armaments between France, England and Germany are now out of date though at one time Germany would have considered them. She would rather say keep up your bombing plots and your munitions. They may all be needed to defend European civilization from going down in a hideous massacre.

It is extraordinary how we shut our eyes to this danger with the horrible example of Spain before us. How we talk about the help given to Franco by Germany and Italy but ignore the help given to the Red Government by the Soviet. While the Nazi form of Government is, as Hitler has said again and again, intended for home consumption, Communism is international and is carrying on an underground agitation throughout the world, and insinuating itself into society and other organizations under various plausible names and disguises, having at its disposal the most formidable secret society in the world, continental Free Masonry, which is a very different affair to our amiable Free Masonry over here, and is revolutionary and anti-Christian.

The centre of the Comintern is Moscow and the Soviet Government gave themselves away when they broke of diplomatic relations with Hungary because she joined the anti-Comintern pact.

One of the cleverest lies put forth by the Communists and accepted over here, is that the anti-Comintern pact is directed against Democracy. It is true Germany resents the continued attacks made upon her in the name of Democracy and occasionally shows up the claims of Democracy to be the one perfect political system, but she has no desire to attack or replace Democracy in any Democratic country by another system. To each country the Government it prefers, is her motto. It is true that there is Nazi agitation in some European countries, because throughout the world many people have been convinced in favour of a Nazi State, but such agitation is not encouraged by the German Government.

Communism is an international movement organising revolution in every country, and it has now been clearly demonstrated that the hideous massacres in Spain of Priests, Monks and Nuns, and the burning of Churches was connived at by the Government of the adventurers in Madrid made up of adventurers who had seized power.

The sustained attack on the German Government and the propagation of lie upon lie through our Press and by means of an endless stream of publications is to be traced back to Communist propaganda.

While active Communist agitation has made little progress in this country, India and Burmah are rotten with Communism and Communism is wishing to set the four Powers at each other's throats. Whenever a step has been made towards agreement it swings back again, through a poisonous propaganda in which the British Press leads.

Certain enmity to Germany is therefore to be expected on the part of Socialists, Extreme Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church. Germany has also another enemy - International Finance, because she will not borrow money outside but is holding up an economic system in which there is no room for the international financier.

If she would only borrow £ 100,000,000 in the City all our Press would coo like sucking doves and our friendship or hostility to the new Spanish Government will depend on whether she consults the City for money.

All the different sources of hostility are at work, but they do not account for the persistent agitation on which large sums of money are being spent, an agitation for a deliberate purpose, a war in which the four Capitalist States will destroy each other so that a Communist state will be built on the ruins, and the one organised source of this persistent agitation is the Comintern with ample funds behind it in Moscow.

The Japanese war in China is not directed against the independence of China or for the possession of territory. It is war against the Soviet. The complete control of the Soviet over Czechoslovakia has been amply proved. When Hitler said he would if compelled fight his way into Sudeten Germany it was not only to free the Sudeten Germans but to close the open door into Europe for the Soviet armies. As I have already pointed out if we had been so rash as to plunge Europe into war on that question and invite t