THE ANSCHLUSS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 128, 2 June 1938, Page 9

THE ANSCHLUSS.

TALES OF HEROISM.

WELLS PLEADS WfTH FREUD.

SCIENTIST REFUSES TO QUIT.

(By a Special Correspondent.) WASHINGTON. The news from Vienna makes bitter hearing for believers in human liberties, but some of it ie pretty stirring too.

In a letter from an English writer comes a new tale as deeply moving as any told thus far. The tale concerns H. G. Wells, whose close friend the English writer ie, and no less a person than Dr. Sigmund Freud, father of psycho-analysis, and one of the halfdozen most distinguished scientists in the world to-day.

Some time before anschluss occurred, Wells was in Vienna and visited Freud. The scientist, "aged, white-bearded, but still clear of mind and eye, received Wells pleasantly, and the two men fell to talking of world affairs. The talk came round to Austria, and Freud reviewed his country's situation, ending the discussion with a flat prediction that Nazi Germany would move to cross the Austrian border in the reasonably near future.

Wells, convinced by Freud's reasoning and what he himself knew, instantly urged the scientist to leave Vienna for a haven in London. Freud made a slight gesture of futility and replied, "No, I am 82 and that is too old to go to a new place." Wells insisted, demanding to know what Freud, who' is angrily loathed by the Nazis just as Einstein was, would do .when .anschluss took place. Freud replied simply that he would "go into his library.'' Still Wells insisted, pointing out the personal danger Freud would be in, even if he withdrew himself from life beyond his library walls. At last I Freud answered, with some finality:

"No. I will not leave my country. If the Nazis come, if they offer me physical violence. I shall kill myself. Otherwise, I shall stay in my library." — JSAJSuL