Count von Luckner’s Visit

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22111, 5 June 1937, Page 14

Count von Luckner’s Visit

The protests that are being made in Australia and hfive also commenced to be made in New Zealand about the prospective visit of Count von Luckner come strangely from the quarters that are making them. Count von Luckner has made it very plain that part of his mission will be a justification and explanation of Nazi ideals and that he is a frank propagandist. No doubt can exist that little sympathy will be found in either the Dominion or the Commonwealth for the system of government operating in Germany. It is a new thing, however, to find members of a party that is

most lively in protest against interference with freedom of speech and opinion, and in Australia especially, against the banning of literature on political grounds, objecting to hearing another political philosophy expounded, however strongly they may disagree with it. The very fact that what .will be said by the Count will be purely propaganda, known and recognised as such, should discount any subversive tendency it may have. And having discounted it to that extent, the public of New Zealand may find much to interest them and much that is educative in a political philosophy that in most respects runs directly counter to their own democratic ideals. It is just as unthinkable that Count von Luckner will be able so to influence public opinion in New Zealand or Australia as to pave the way for a dictatorship on Nazi lines in either country, as it is to imagine the population of either wanting to set up the Soviet system as -operating in Russia simply because a Russian Communist had spoken in praise of his country’s form of government. The curious lack of perspective indicated by the protests is obviously the outcome of prejudice and hysterical fear. New Zealanders and Australians may earn the reputation attributed to Germans of having little sense of humour if thfy allow their- emotion to override their common sense. And in that case they will be fit subjects for conversion to Nazism.