"THEY’RE HUMAN, AREN’T THEY?"

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23003, 24 April 1940, Page 7

"THEY’RE HUMAN, AREN’T THEY?"

TO THE EDITOR OE THE PRESS. Sir, I enclose a leaflet that was left in our letter box to-day published by a Nazi body that calls itself the New Zealand Peace Pledge Union and has offices at 17 McColl street, Wellington, S.W.I. One is headed, “They’re Human, Aren’t They?” The incident is that a British skipper gave food to the crew of a German ship in Boston Harbour, United States of America, because they were reported to be short of provisions, and when- someone commented upon his action he remarked, “They’re human, aren’t they?” They then publish a letter on the above incident and criticise the starving of the Germans in the last war. Why it appears to me to be so obviously of Nazi and not of genuine pacifist origin is because a genuine, pacifist would be impartial. He would point out that during the last war both sides tried to starve the other and that the British and French succeeded rather better than the Germans. He would also have pointed out that “they’re- human, aren’t they?” exactly expresses the position of the 'two parties in the,present war. The

British and French maintain that the Poles, Czechs, and Jews are human beings; the Germans maintain that they are not, and indeed that they (the Germans) are the only human beings in the world. A similar case occurred about 80 years ago. The South Americans regarded the negroes as they did their cattle, whereas President Lincoln and the North Americans said, “They’re human, aren’t they?” Had the South won, negroes would have been slaves to-day throughout the whole United States. Personally, I consider that the abolition of slavery was worth the lives and suffering that the war cost the Americans. And in this war the result will be worth the cost if it results in the inhabitants of the whole of Europe being regarded as human beings. Great Britain has for many decades regarded the inhabitants of the whole world as human beings. Up to the present New Zealand has excluded Asiatics from the category of human beings. There was also another equally misleading leaflet upon the causes of the war.—Yours, etc., PACIFIST. April 19, 1940.