Evening Post TUESDAY MARCH 21, 1939. THE NAZI MENTALITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 67, 21 March 1939, Page 10

Evening Post TUESDAY MARCH 21, 1939. THE NAZI MENTALITY

One of the greatest difficulties, if not the greatest difficulty, which the British Prime Minister (Mr. Chamberlain) has encountered in the pursuance of his policy of appeasement in Europe has been the different mentality of the leaders of the totalitarian States with whom he has attempted to negotiate personally. It is not a difference of degree of intelligence, but of attitude towards promises, pledges, and assurances. Mr. Chamberlain is a typical Englishman with whom his word is his bond, an attitude which has made the Englishman's word, "palabra Inglese," a synonym for honour all over Spanish America. He assumed that the men with whom he was dealing, the dictators of Germany and Italy, in. conversations face to face were equally honest and honourable; in a word, that he was dealing with gentlemen, to whom a "gentlemen's agreement" meant what it means to an Englishman. He has been sadly disillusioned, but, also in the manner of the Englishman, he has been reluctant to make a song about it. In addressing the House of Commons after the announcement of the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, the Czech portions of the attenuated former Republic of Czecho-Slovakia, last week, he declined to associate himself with any charges of breach of faith, such as others, he said, were bandying about. The Prime Minister spoke more freely outside Parliament at his Birmingham meeting on Friday, but even there he was content to ask what had become of the assurances Herr Hitler had given and what reliance could be placed on other assurances from the same source. Mr. Chamberlain was in good company. The British people in the Homeland and throughout the Empire are loath to think evil of other nations and their leaders, and slow to wake up to the menace of what has been going on elsewhere. Having no political philosophy of their own in written form neither the British people nor their leaders were disposed to study the implications of what the dictators and their associates had said in print or on the platform. This tolerant attitude, amounting almost to indifference, is well described in Dr. Borgese's book, "Goliath," a bitterly eloquent biography of Mussolini and his times: On the whole they were unprepared to. realise the philosophical and fanatical backgrounds working behind such individuals as Hitler and Mussolini. . . . What havoc the nationalistic tumour was making of the disturbed organisms in Continental Europe, they were far from imagining, and their natural trend was to. translate the oratory of the dictators into ordinary prose instead of meeting them as messengers—however personally inferior—of forces devastatingly supreme, and of treating them as such until the day of their conversion or ruin. This background of Hitleriam was clearly stated by Mr. Wickham Steed long before the rape of Austria and more recent events in his book "The Meaning of Hitlerism," when he said: War of liberation ... in reality the war for German ascendancy, lies in the background of Hitler's thoughts and forms the steady purpose behind the facade of powerful asseverations of which he is prodigal. How prodigal could be shown by a list of these asseverations were there space. Speaking in August, 1933, he took the vow: "As long as I am Chancellor there will be no war save in the event of an invasion of our .territory from without." Again on March 7, 1936, he, said: "Germany will never break the peace of Europe." On September 26, 1938, he gave a solemn assurance: "The Sudetenland is the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe." He admitted that he had told Mr. Chamberlain. that this was his last territorial ambition in Europe and that he had no wish to have in the Reich people of other races than German. All these pledges and many others are now so much waste paper. The world has now at last come to realise that no reliance is to be placed on Herr Hitler's word and that the Machiavellian doctrine that princes need not keep faith prevails instead. Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Minister, who shared with his chief, the Prime Minister, the hope that peace might be won by direct approach to the dictators,

admitted in the: House of Lords yesterday his profound disappointment. He said that the long-term policy, envisaged in the joint declaration of Herr Hitler and Mr. Chamberlain, of building up a peaceful Europe on the basis of free consultation on all differences had been disastrously belied by events. "What inference," he said, "are we to draw from this pressure exercised under threat of force and from this intervention in the internal struggles of other States? Every country which is Germany's neighbour is now uncertain of tomorrow and every country which values its national identity and sovereignty stands warned against danger from within inspired from without." Even the British Empire is not secure from such threats. South Africa, which has suffered from Nazi manoeuvres and intrigues in the Union, has sprung to action at the menace of intervention and is already taking all precautions against trouble from within or without. There is a lesson in all this to the other Dominions of the Empire, not excepting New Zealand. s