THIS WAR AND THE LAST

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23494, 24 November 1941, Page 4

THIS WAR AND THE LAST

MR DUFF COOPER’S WARNING BROADCAST ADDRESS “Do not let us make the fatal mistake of thinking that this war is like others before it. Other wars have been fought for territories, dynasties, and commercial advantage, but this war means more than that,” said the Rt. Hon. A. Duff Cooper, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the British Cabinet, in a broadcast address last evening. “It is seldom that truth falls from the lips of the arch enemy of the human race, Adolf Hitler,” he said. “But when he said not long ago that the future of Germany for 1000 years depended on the result of the present war it was at least partly true, “Much more than the future of Germany depends on the result of this war,. The future of mankind depends upon it. Sometimes I think there is a real danger lest we forget this fact. It is a solemn fact; a fearful fact. It should be present to our minds night and day, so that we may rouse ourselves to the efforts and sacrifices that it demands of us.” . The last war had btfen a very terrible one, and a great deal was at stake then. If Britain had been completely defeated Germany would never have allowed her to recover her strength, as Britain had foolishly allowed Germany to do. Then, the existence of the Empire had been at stake, but something greater was at stake to-aay. “The former German Empire was a very evil thing,” said Mr Duff Cooper. “I have no wish to paint a flattering portrait of it. It believed m the rule of force and in the law of blood and iron. We did well to destroy it. But lei us be fair to it, while condemning it Let us compare it with the far more hideous thing that has taken its Pl The former German Empire had not been a despotic tyranny, it bad a freely elected Parliament which could and had criticised the Government. It had a free press, freedom of speech, and hardly any effort was made to interfere with religion. Above all, the State was, in name at any rate, piedominantly Christian, “A Cruel Race’* The Germans had always been a cruel race. Books by German authors, such as “All Quiet on the Western Front,” illustrated this peculiarly revolting quality of the German character But in the old Germany cruelty and torture had not been adopted deliberately as instruments of pohey and methods of administration. The concentration camp was an outward ana visible sign of the determination of a gang of bloodthirst, criminals to impose their rule on the world by terror and torture. “It would have been a terrible thing to have lost the last war, but it would not have been the end of all, the final frustration of human hopes,’ he said. Allies might then have been found in Germany herself, in her free press and institutions. Though he could not say he would have been happy in such a world, it would at least not have been one without hope. “How much more terrible it would be to-day if the Nazi tyranny should prove triumphant. It would be the triumph of the principle of evil itself. Never let us forget the main principle ,on which their philosophy is based—if it can be called a philosophy, which is more the ugly dream of a debased, diseased- imagination. It is that they, the Germans, are a people superior to all the other peoples of the earth, that whatever is good in the world is German, and that whatever is bad is of foreign origin. “They are taught to believe that they are a nation of masters, and that other nations are born to be slaves, that the world ought to belong to them as lords of creation. “This Hideous Thing” “If we had been told of this some years ago we might have dismissed it as the nightmare of a madman, too ghastly to happen in a civilised world m the twentieth century. But since Hitler came to power we have seen this hideous thing coming to pass before our eyes.” Hitler had first loosed his bestial reign of terror on the Jews, and then on many others in Germany —not Communists only but Liberals, and all who opposed him. Germans were reduced to silence by torture. Then the Czechs became victims, and then the Poles. It should never be forgotten how Germany had treated the Poles. They had deliberately tried to wipe out a highly civilised people. They had deEorted vast numbers, mercilessly reaking up families and condemning them to work as slaves in Germany. He quoted a report of the punishment of two German girls for showing kind, ness to Polish prisoners. “Charity, the first of Christian virtues, is a punishable crime in Germany to-day," he said. The Gentians were afraid of Poland, and hated her, because the Poles had Increased since the last war more rapidly than any other nation, in Europe. “But if Poland is hatred and fear to the Nazis. Britain is death and destruction. If the Nazis' win the treatment meted out to Britain will be infinitely worse than anything the Poles have had to suffer. We are not going to be defeated. But we must not let this certainty of victory blind us to the need for unremitting effort. It is upon the whole people, women as well as men, that the responsibility to-day is resting.” These were days of decision, and on our shoulders rested the responsibility for deciding what the future of the race should be. If by our efforts a swift victory should be gained, posterity would call us blessed.