Hitler and Peace

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21377, 21 January 1935, Page 12

Hitler and Peace

Promises of peace are no new thing

from Hitler, the one man above all others upon whom the peace of Europe for the next few years depends; and there was nothing new in the statements, reported on Saturday, which he made to the English journalist on whom he seems chiefly to rely when he wants to reach the British public. But these pacific promises seem to have no congruity with the bellicose words that the Storm Troops sometimes hear, and they go strangely with the tales of secret rearming that have at least some basis. StilL the recent actions of the Nazi Government have given more support to Hitler as he talks across frontiers than.to Hitler speaking to hungry men who may be quieted by the promise of action, no matter how long deferred. Germany's reasonable attitude in the negotiations with the League's Committee.of Three

before the Saar plebiscite, Hitler's orders of good behaviour in the Saar before the vote, his appeal for calm and a sense of international responsibility when his victory was declared, and now the agreement, announced by Mr Eden, for safeguarding his opponents in the territory, suggest, if no more, that the Nazi Government has outgrown its hooligan youth. One point in particular in Hitler's interview seems to give it the mark of truth; that is his statement that communism would be an almost certain gainer from a war. No one who believes that any ordered form of government could survive a future war can doubt that; and no one who has read Hitler's writings or listened to bis speeches can have avoided the thought that in him hatred of communism reaches almost the point of mania. Hitler believes fanatically | that communists and Jews have no I title to life; and when he says " I " have not fought them for 15 years "in order eventually to establish " their rule," there will not be many doubters. It is possible, even probable, that German rearmament is not inspired by any plans of offence, but by' the determination fixed in the nation by the Nazis, to "equality." Hitler knows, as well as the French, that it will be difficult for the powers to reject his claim to military power when he shows that he has it. "£he most reassuring of his statements, though it means the sacrifice of his modern version of the old Mittel Europa dream, is the promise that Germany will make no more territorial claims. If he keeps it, Austria will lose her potentialities of trouble for others, and Memel will no longer be a threat to the world. Even a peaceful Germany cannot, of course, solve the problems that the statesmen of 1919 set the future; but she may assure the peace of Europe for long enough to let habits of reason grow till those problems can at least be approached without fear of a world explosion.