VICTORS AND VANQUISHED

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25206, 10 June 1947, Page 2

VICTORS AND VANQUISHED

CONDITIONS IN BRITAIN AND GERMANY IMPRESSIONS OF FORMER SERVICE CHAPLAIN ’ Although living conditions in Britain might seem bad, it was like returning to Paradise after a visit to Germany, said the Rev. P. O. C. Edwards, a former Royal Air Force chaplain, and now chaplain at Christ’s College, Christchurch, in an address at a luncheon meeting of the Christchurch Businessmen’s Club yesterday. In Britain, he continued, great progress had been made in the removal of the debris of the blitz; but the problem of its disposal was as nothing compared with Germany, where the desolation was bn a much vaster scale, and where there were miles upon miles of gutted rubble and burned buildings. The physical damage in Germany was terrifying in its proportions. The problem of reconstruction could be tackled in Britain, but in Germany it was a different matter. “The Germans cannot make up their minds whether the British and Americans are fools or knaves,” said Mr Edwards. Germans saw in their country a muddle in which nothing seemed to happen. In his view, said Mr Edwards, too many directives were issued to owners of factories And similar undertakings in the British and American zones. He quoted the case of a man who owned a factory employing two persons, and who had received more than 1000 directives from the Allied authorities. The Russians’ methods—entry into a place, seizure of assets, perhaps the beating-up of the people, and then a retreat—were understood, for their motive was obvious. What the Germans could not understand were the British and American methods, which had exactly the same results as those of the Russians, but which stemmed from the highest motives. • In Britain, there was to-day enough food quantitatively, said Mr Edwards, but the diet lacked variety. British people were possibly more healthy than ever before, because good medical advice had been taken by the rationing authorities; but the danger was that morale would suffer through the monotonous food. Help was needed, not to prevent starvation, but to provide variety in the diet. German Morale In Germany, the meagre ration scales had not been honoured for months on end, and the people were really just about at starvation point. Those in the big cities suffered most. What was most amazing in Germany was the manner in which the people’s morale had held. One would rarely see a dirty, “scrubby” German in the big cities; the girls wore clean frocks, ana the middle-class men white collars. It would be bad if their morale broke, for an ungovernable rabble would result. Germans were now saying that a war with Russia was inevitable, and that the Allies would eventually find Hitler was’right in his claim that Communism was the western world's real enemy. What the Germans could not understand was why America and Britain did not make use of the advantage they had now in possessing the atom bomb, and immediately make war on Russia. There was a certain amount of evidence that the Nazi movement still existed underground, said Mr Edwards. Present conditions would tend to foster its re-emergence, because the Nazi philosophy was still in Germany. People in Germany would argue about the Nazi movement, but seldom about individuals such as Hitler. The Germans could not understand the paraphernalia of the war crimes trials. They asked why ther6 had been a delay of months in the execution of men obviously doomed. “What was intended to teach them the wonders of democracy merely made us out a lot of fools,’ ’ added Mr Edwards.