"When Germans Think"

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 15

"When Germans Think"

“Sometimes one wonders,” writes Mr. J. A. Spender in -the “Sunday Times, “whether in the watches of the night, when they are free to think their own thoughts, humane and intelligent Germans are not asking: 'What is it all for?

“What .purpose can be served by this trampling on innocent peoples who have never offered them any offence by the destruction of their towns and villages, the ravaging of their country, the massacre of the fugitives?

“Is it merely that the life which the German tyrant has imposed on bis own people, the servile life terrorism, shall be substituted for their free and peaceful existence, with its roots in history and experience, and adapted through generations to their nature and character?

“Is this an object which can appeal to any intelligent man or justify the slaughter of German youth? “We may plough through the dreary wastes of Nazi literature and fail to find in it one humane or civilizing thought.

“Its theme is power for the sake of power, submission for the sake of submission, aggrandisement of one nation without a thought of other nations, the reduction of all to the condition to which her dictators have reduced their own country, ruthless persecution everywhere of Jews and ail other races supposed to be inferior.

“For a time the intoxicating sense of winning victories may reconcile the German people to the hideous cost in life and l suffering which they entail, but this is a transient emotion against which we must watch our faith that the world never will be, as it never has been, conquered in this way.”