NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 85, 21 January 1942, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

WORDS GONE WRONG. Those who have a poor opinion of human nature can point to the tendency of words in common use to go to the bad, comments the “Birmingham Post.” The tendency can be observed at work in all ages. In early English silly ’ meant “blessed,” then it came to mean “innocent,” and at last “foolish” and even “imbecile." “Lewd” was once simply “rustic." “Villain" and “churl" were low only in the social scale. In colloquial speech, if neutral words are given a positive significance it is almost always to an opprobious one: thus “a smell” means “a. bad smell,” and “language” stands for “bad language.” A very recent example of an innocent words ruin is furnished by “appeasement,’ which, because of its association with a muchcriticised policy, has been turned into a term of political abuse. “LOW-LIMIT OF INFAMY.”

Broadcasting to Germany, Dr. Thomas Mann, the famous German writer, said:— “In the outside world men are discussing whether any real distinction can be made between the German nation and the forces which dominate it to-day; whether Germany is capable of entering honestly into the new international and social order, based on the principles of peace and justice, which will arise from this war. When I am asked to define my attitude to this question, my answer is something like this. It must be admitted that this so-called National Socialism is deeply rooted in German life; it is a poisonous distortion of certain ideas which always bore within them the germs of fatal corruption, but which were none the less current even in the old, civilised and cultured Germany. They were held in high repute there. They were classed as romantic and exercised a considerable fascination on the outside world. But I have faith and patriotism enough to believe that the Germany of Durer, Bach, Beethoven and Goethe has the deeper historical roots. The other Germany will b short-lived. We must not mistake its present stertorous panting for deep, regular and healthy breathing. This Germany is spent, or nearly so; it is truly on the point of death. It is the Third Reich, which as the incarnation of an idea is something unique and altogether deadly. All our hopes are based on this very fact, namely that National Socialism, as the political fulfilment of ideas which for the last century and a half have fermented in the minds of Germans, literate and illiterate, is a distortion, an extreme, an experiment in brutal immorality, which cannot be exceeded and can never be repeated. It represents the jettisoning of all humanity, a berserk onslaught on human law and morality, a desperado's violation of those spiritual values which were and still are so dear to Germans. It represents the re-creation of a state •devoted to total war; it implies racial intolerance and world servitude. It is the absolute low-limit of infamy.”