STRENGTH—An Acute Survey

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXV, Issue 12390, 30 July 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

STRENGTH—An Acute Survey

Hitler fascists. Passions would run high, higher perhaps than they have ever run in international war. Both countries would wield the weapon of propaganda to the full. “If the German armies should suffer serious setbacks, or if Germany should find it difficult or impossible to obtain from abroad raw materials or food, or if the Nazi forces, like those of Napoleon, should move too far from their home bases and find themselves cut 'off from supplies and subject to continual harassment by the native population, their morale might weaken and Russian propaganda might stir a response, at least among those groups which, until the triumph of Hitler, were nurtured in a socialist tradition. After all, the Communist party and the Socialists in Germany polled over 12 million votes in the last pre-Hitler election. “The Nazis, on the . other hand, could not hope for such results. If in Germany there are milions who have had a basis of experience in socialist doctrine, there is not a single group in the Russian population that has had any basis of experience in Nazi doctrine—small as the gap is between Nazism and communism as at present practised. It might have been different if Russia had had a large and numerous middle class. But Russia never had a middle class compared to that in Germany, in France, or in England. “It would, of course, be futile to prophesy the outcome of a possible war between Russia and Germany, perhaps allied with Japan. Under the impact of defeat Germany might go communist: that is Hitler’s supreme risk. Russia’s risk is different, for she cannot’"be nazified; but she can be thrown hack to the economic chaos and penury from which she has rescued herself since the Revolution, and to unimaginable anarchy. The (magnitude of the risks is the first of the reasons why the war between Russia and Germany,” concludes the Round Table, ‘may never take place.”