FACT PERVERTED

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 100, 22 January 1940, Page 7

FACT PERVERTED

Impudence Of Nazi Speakers (British Official Wireless., (Received January 21, 9 p.m.) RUGBY, January 20. There is practically no comment in the morning newspapers on the speech in which Dr. Goebbels—standing on the very ground the invasion of which by the German armies set Europe alight with the flames of war —quaintly described the Allies’ reluctance in taking up arms in defence of the liberties of small and great nations alike in the following terms: “They went into this war with loud trumpet blasts and threw a declaration of war at our feet with the pride of a Spaniard.” The cool, calculated impudence with which Nazi speakers pervert fact and distort purposes did, in the early days, call fortlr. an unwilling tribute of amazement and amusement from observers here. But by repetition the technique has lost its power to evoke either surprise or argument. It is felt to have become merely tedious. The only parts of the Poznan speech which aroused a modicum of interest are passages which betray that the chief Nazi propagandist is taking serious notice of the possibility of the German public being divided as a result of a realization of where Nazi leadership has taken them, aiid of the fact that the Allies have declared that it is Hitlerism and not the German people which is the enemy. Dr. Goebbels obviously thinks it necessary to counter that danger, but it occurs ’to some commentators here that his method of doing so may not have been well chosen. The effect of a period of quiet reflection by the German people under wartime conditions in Germany on the Propaganda Minister’s remark that “Germany today has political and military leadership of such excellence as she never possessed before” is thought to be less predictable than Dr. Goebbels, in the enthusiasm of his oratory, may have realized.