NAZIS' CODE OF HONOUR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 103, 28 October 1939, Page 10

NAZIS' CODE OF HONOUR

The philosophy of "Mem Kampf" is that "you can't keep a good lie down"—hence the yon Ribbenirop utterance. But President Roosevelt, | without mentioning yon Ribbentrop, breaks a lance with the author of "Mem Kampf" by declaring that "repetition' does not transform a lie into a truth." Now, if the United States were a small neutral country bordering, like Belgium, on Germany the publication of this smashing reply to both yon Ribbentrop and his master would be held to be an infringement of neutrality; and the fact that the Nazis are warning Belgium, but certainly will not warn President Roosevelt, illustrates once again how circumstances alter cases. The President himself is compelled by circumstances to effect a separation between American thought and American action. As to action, the United States Government will not intervene in the European war, and its neutrality is not only certain but complete; as to thinking, neutrality is simply impossible. This significant psychological distinction, and the President's pointed way of expressing it, are likely to find a place in history.

It is impossible, broadcasts President Roosevelt, that we can be neutral in thought as well as act. Americans begin to know the difference between truth and falsehood, no matter how often the falsehood is reiterated. Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

Anything that any Belgian newspaper may have said, and for which the Nazis issue a warning threatening Belgian neutrality, surely pales into insignificance compared with President Roosevelt's magnificent indictment of Nazi mendacity. Yet it can be relied on that Nazi honour, so sensitive about what is said in Brussels, will swallow the Roosevelt dose without a grimace, and any more that may be coming from the same impregnable quarter.