Disorder in the New Order

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23943, 10 May 1943, Page 4

Disorder in the New Order

Since a rigid censorship is said to have been clamped down, on Sofia for two days, while disorders there were dealt with, little trust can be given to detailed reports; but there is nothing improbable about the report in general. Ropular feeling against the Government, the Germans, and the war has undoubtedly been rising for months; it has undoubtedly been expressed in riots and demonstrations. Official denials of anything more than “communist “ crimes ” have served to confirm the truth. Bulgaria has not been alone in suffering from a wave of this sort of “ crime.” In Hungary, what was denounced as a communist plot was in fact a secret and serious attempt to form an allparty popular front to combat Nazi domination. In Rumania, the frightful losses on the Russian front were suppressed in vain. The newspapers defied the censorship and protested against Antonescu’s misleading picture of events and their course; hundreds of officials resigned; the Minister of Culture attacked the Orthodox Church for its “failure to collaborate”; breaches of the peace were widespread. The situation in Bulgaria and Rumania corresponds imperfectly with the “ complete unanimity ” reported after King Boris’s and General Antonescu’s visits to Hitler. The same may be said of Italy. Closely as Hitler and Mussolini may agree, Italian peasants have refused to give up their wheat, Italian soldiers have deserted in thousands to the Jugoslavs and are fighting beside them, and Italian crowds have shouted for peace; and Mussolini’s order, bringing home most of the Italian workers in Germany, is on the whole easier to understand as a gesture to the Italian people than as a demonstration of Axis solidarity. It has a precedent in the Hungarian Prime ' Minister Kallay s order, in December, recalling all Hungarian workers from Germany. The progress of Germany's drafting of labour from the occupied territories and of her own mass mobilisation has perhaps been such as to allow these steps to be approved; it is more likely that the Germans have been obliged to submit to them. For no development is more interesting than the appearance, among the satellite leaders, of a tendency to cover themselves, so far as they can, against the gathering threat of defeat, and even to assert their independence of the New Order; and the Germans have done little or nothing te resist. They have

made the best of it by attempting to represent the New Order in a new light. Thus the Wilhelmstrasse applauded Ryti’s speech on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Finland's independence: its emphasis on the rights of small nations was “ highly appreciated.” Kallay, presenting the Hungarian budget, insisted that “German National “ Socialism should not be dragged “into Hungary’s internal policy at, “ all. . . . We must not forget that I “ we are moving towards times when “ not we alone shall decide the “ future of our country. We should “ not ... set ourselves aims which “ would only result in further dis- “ appointments and unfulfilled ex- “ pectations. We want to preserve an “ independent Hungary; that is an “ aim in itself,” A few days later Kallay -refused to follow the Nazi policy against the Jews. Finland refused also; and Ryti’s speech was the cue, in the Finnish press and broadcasts, for statements directed without much disguise against “ leading statesmen ” whose “ un- “ reasonable aspirations ” could only mean the “ suppression ” of small peoples. Against this background may be noted the much-discussed visit to Stockholm of the Finnish Minister of Social Affairs, Mr Fagerholm. who spoke plainly against the Nazi order for Europe, and the free discussion in Finland of a Scandinavian Federation as the basis of Finland’s future. It is, of course, possible to suspect that the Germans have not tolerated but promoted these expressions of ideological independence and political dissent—and others: for instance, the rejection of Holland’s destiny in the Nazi order by the quisling Mussert and of Belgium’s by Degrelle, and the resignation of the Greek puppet Minister, Tsolakoglu. But though German methods are deep, they do not invite risks that can be avoided; and the risks invited in this case would be those of stirring and encouraging the very forces that the Germans have set themselves to destroy and have every reason to fear. But what is not to be attri- j buted to subtlety must be attributed to weakness. The Germans affect to be pleased by tendencies they cannot check. They can no longer spare the force necessary to establish and maintain fully Nazified governments everywhere. Because their power is failing, hitherto subservient national leaders like Kallay begin to play their own game instead of their masters’. There is one thing, however, that German pretences cannot achieve; the restatement of Nazi plans for Europe in any form that can argue the past away and make converts out of victims.