THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 140, 10 March 1941, Page 6

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments4—.Reflections Intercession. O God our Father, we pray for those now being trained for war; give them the spirit of discipline and loyalty, help them to endure, hardness and strengthen them with Thy grace, that withstanding the temptations that beset them, they may show themselves worthy defenders of the cause of their country and true followers of Jesus Christ. Amen.

“The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction w*e are moving.”—O. W. Holmes. * ♦ ♦

“Adolf Hitler is called upon to be the leader of the world—unhampered by anyone. Adolf Hitler has set up a Reich which stretches from the Atlantic to the River Bug and from the Pyrenees to North Cape; everywhere there the German war flag flies Never before have we been so great and so exalted. Adolf emerged from the people. Today he is called upon to be the leader of the world—unhampered by anyone. Adolf Hitler did not begin this war—it was forced on him, and today he stands before the world as the greatest victor, the greatest war lord of history.”—Dr. Frank, Governor of Nazi-occupied Poland, in a broadcast address.

“As one by one of our great cities are heavily attacked by the night bombers, fire stands higher and higher as the most deadly of the weapons they carry. Fire is the guide laid by the most expert of the German navigators, setting the ground plan by which his less able followers will work during the many later hours. Fire does by far the greater damage; the high-explosive bombs which come after serve mainly to ma ke the work of dealing with the fires harder by upsetting water supplies and communications. Thus if we want to take muefi of the destruction out of these night raids we must first defeat fire as soon as it shows its ugly obvious head.” —“Manchester Guardian.”

“Every man has his own hopes from this war, and Dr. Malan’s hopes include the break-up of Britain’s might. In. Pretoria recently he bade Afrikanerdom to be of good cheer in the midst of present dangers, because it might well be that British power would be broken. Two-thirds of the South African forces now trained and mobilized are Africaner men. They do not agree that the present world war is being fought for the retention of Imperialistic power. They go north to do battle, not as slaves of a tyrant irnwer, but of their own free will, and they chose to fight because they know perfectly well that South Africa, which lies in no danger of any sort from Britain, lies body and soul in grave peril from the poisonous blight of Nazidom.” —“Gape Argus.” * » »

“The only Europe that can flourish is one in which men have liberty to live their own lives, to develop their own ideas, and pursue their own ends under a system of equal justice for all. Bui that is precisely the Europe that Hitler does not want and will not have at any price: the New Order that he envisages simply means the hegemony of Germany and the helotry of other nations, a privileged caste of Nazi industrialists between the Rhine and the Oder, and a depressed population of peasants in France and Poland working to feed their German masters. A generation of that, and the Continent would be back in the Dark Ages. Civilization would not indeed perish from the earth, but it would migrate from Europe to America, Australia, and Africa; and England, the last bastion of human liberty and justice in the Old World, would be hard put to it to preserve her independence—for many of her sons, like Cromwell three centuries before, would be tempted to sell all they had, and migrate to other lands where they could breathe freely and without the constant threat of a tyrant and his Gestapo.”—“United Empire Journal.”

In his speech to the provincial representatives of the Fascist Party in the Palazzo Venetia in Rome on November 18, Mussolini spoke of “the subtle enemy Greece.” He went on to say “one thing must be said and it may perhaps surprise certain Italians who are not mentally living in our times. It is this, that the Greeks hate Italy as they hate no other people. It is a hatred which appears at first inexplicable, but it is genuine, deep and incurable hate common to all classes in cities and villages, in the higher and lower classes, everywhere in Greece. Its reasons are mysterious.” In that speech Mussolini had to give reasons to his followers why the first onslaught by the Italians on Greece had not been successful. He had to explain why it had not been possible to carry out a lightning blow, and why the Greeks had shown themselves so ready to resist. “Its reasons are mysterious,” he said. They are only mysterious to Italians, and then not (o all Italians. Hence the reference to certain 11 al la ns, who are not mentally living in our times. Yet the hate is not confined to the Greeks. It more than exists in Yugoslavia and in other regions of the Near East. It is born of the realization of the extravagance of Italian claims and the contempt for the modern Italian reality, and it has been increased by recent happenings: such as the seizure of Albania and the manner and time of the Italian entry into the present war. —E. J. Patterson in the “Empire Review.” « ♦ ♦

The Profiteer. The vulture, waddling through the

battlefield, Snaps up whatever profit Death may

yield. Mr. X runs a less fastidious racket — Prepared from dead or living to make a packet. This bird, true to his natural, carrion

creed, Will use Man’s bitterest pain or utmost

need To feather his nest.—And foul it? Wall, what of it?— He’ll find some way to turn his filth to I>roflt. —C. Day Lewis, in “The Observer’’ (Londoul.