"SCOURGES OF MANKIND"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 105, 4 May 1940, Page 10

"SCOURGES OF MANKIND"

Casting a glance a long way back in history, "The Times" points out that "none of the men who have been scourges of the world has ever been less chivalrous or more redoubtable" than Hitler. Literature has regarded Alexander the Great as being the first of the world-scourges appointed by destiny. The fates that "set young Ammon loose to scourge mankind," his military adventures in three continents, and the fact that in the end all his greatness had to be packed into merely one tomb, have always been favourite material for men of letters. When Alexander fought his way to Egypt, reducing Gaza en route, it is recorded that the priests of the Libyan temple, with whom Jupiter passed by the name of Ammon, hailed the invader as Son of Ammon, and it is as "Ammon's great son" that he appears in the pages of Pope. But, stripping the story of its romantic glamour, one finds" that the priests of Ammon neither created nor confirmed any divinity; they merely took high rank among the defeatists of their day.

Defeatism today is as strong and as insidious as it was then. To counter it, the democracies must be more than merely reliant on the ultimate triumph of their cause. They must be alert and active now to conquer defeatism both within and without—to deal with the native variety, as well as the imported defeatists and the active enemies who, "infiltrated" through democratic countries and enjoying democratic liberty, symbolise in their tactics the story of the Trojan horse. When "The Times" states that none of the world-scourges of history has been more "redoubtable" than Hitler, the purpose of "The Times" is to make easy-going democrats wake up to the full scope and meaning of Hitlerism, and realise that their whole freedom is at stake. Europe, Asia, and Africa, including Palestine, Egypt and Libya, have seen during thousands of years just such world-shaking events as totalitarianism is planning today. History, from Troy down to Napoleon, is full of lessons. Have the free peoples of the.modern world, learned these lessons, or must they learn them only through the scourge? Hitler has no more time than had Attila for people who quail and fail; and the more the world alters the more it is the same with regard to the stark realities of war and survival.