TERRORISM IN GERMANY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 1, 1 July 1935, Page 8

TERRORISM IN GERMANY

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—l am,' no Fascist, no admirer of Hitler, and I will not be drawn into a defence of Fascism in answer to your correspondents. Did I" state or insinuate that there is no terror in Germany? I lived in Germany from August, 1930, to January, 1935, with Jews in Berlin, with Nazis in Mainz, with Freemasons in Bonn, with Nationalists ir. the Ruhr. I have myself been manhandled by Nazis, and received attentions from the German political police. I do not need 1q learn Irom.

| your correspondents what terrorism in Germany is. Although requested I will not discuss the burning of the Reichstag: I have all the evidence about it that is available to your correspondent, and I judge that evidence inadequate to arrive at any public conclusion, whatever my private suspicions may be. Further, does your correspondent really expect an Austrian paper to give a fair review of German criminal statistics? The very fact that the period was chosen so as to cover as much as possible of two revolutions (January-September, 1933, and June 30, 1934) should have made him suspicious. Is it not irony that the propaganda of one Fascist country against another/Fascist country should be accepted as gospel? Neither correspondent answers the main contention, namely, that the absence of a certain type of attack on the Hitler regime from the columns of "The Times" argues that it is based on unreliable sources and should therefore be treated as propaganda. One correspondent says that "the victims will not repeat their experience except to those in whom they have the complciest confidence." True; that is precisely why foreign papers have difficulty in obtaining news direct from such people. The same writer naively imagines that victims will have *the completest confidence in the correspondent of an anti-Fascist newspaper! Evidently he does not know* that since 1933 there exists a real German nation for the first time in world history. He speaks of German Jews. I know only one Jewish emigre in this country, and he declines absolutely to criticise the Hitler regime before New Zealanders. He is not afraid; he has no dependants in Germany; but he is an honourable man. Would your correspondent prefer to see him vilifying the land of his birth before foreigners? British freedom matte us great; and long may we continue to enjoy what Mourois calls "the self-applause of an unbeaten nation." We do not know what it is to lose a great war. But is it British fair play to scold the vanquished for being vanquished? Do your correspondents not realise that Germany is hungry and desperate because of the Peace Treaty that we all helped to. make? Nations go Fascftt, not out of free choice, but from hunger. Crowd a great and proud nation on to a territory too small to feed it, and the result is Fascism. Germany lived on her capital until the inflation of 1923; she lived on foreign loans until the Wall Street crash of 1929; since then millions # of i her people eat little besides potatoes, black bread, and a little margarine. It is not British to read moral lectures to hungry men and women. Do we want the world to call us hypocrites? Are there no Christians left? ■ . Today we can no longer dissociate Germany from the Hitler regime;.; 61,000,000 people have so often ex-i pressed their confidence in him that we must treat them as the real Germany, and the remaining 4,000,000 as a dissentient minority. Germany today is mad; we, helped to drive her mad; and if we have any Christianity in us, we have to try to restore her sanity. The way to do that is to offer her our friendship. That is also the best way to end terrorism in Germany; for adVice is often accepted from a candid friend, but never from a moralist who preacher from a Pharisaic pedestal. But friendship with Germany is a matter that transcends the limits of newspaper controversy. I have written out of affection for a great and noble nation, and out of the will to bring order into world affairs. The way of friendship with Germany is the only road I know towards that goal; and ij have tried to 'show a way round one obstacle on the road—anti-Fascist propaganda. If your correspondents can show us some better road towards j world order, I shall be pleased; if they cannot, they are welcome to the last word in this controversy;—l ■ am,. etc.,

R. A. LOCHORE.