GERMANY'S ROLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 58, 5 September 1940, Page 9

GERMANY'S ROLE

DAMNING INDICTMENT

A BUTCHER BIRD 5

PRELUDE TO HITLER

A damning indictment of the role which Germany has played in Europe over three generations was made by Sir Robert Vansittart, chief diplomatic adviser to the British Government, in a broadcast from Daventry yesterday. The German people, he declared, had been taught to regard war as salutary and necessary. Many people tried hard to believe the best of the Nazis, but it was always the worst that prevailed. • The Nazis were simply incapable of peace. It was not their way of life. "'ln 1907 I was crossing the Black Sea in a German ship," said Sir Robert. "It' was spring and the rigging was full of bright coloured birds. I noticed one bird more strongly marked than the .others and with a heavier beak. Every now and then it sprang on some unsuspecting other bird and killed it. It 'was a shrike, or butcher bird." As a bird lover he had pondered this incident, and the thought ran across his mind, and had never left it, that that bird behaved as Germany did. He was.26.years, of age at the time, and life looked good. There were 400,000,----.000 happinesses in Europe, but even then he felt .the shadow on them, the shadow of Germany. That butcher bird's. record had a parallel in the Nazis' rise to power. RESORT TO FORGERY. It took three generations, however, to develop in the German people that which paved the way for the Nazis. Sir Robert referred to the Prussian wars of 1864, 1866, and 1870, of the resort to forgery to justify some of them, which the German people thought clever, how this forgery became an integral • part of the system, how by hook or by crook the butcher bird got three wars, how Germany tried to promote wars in 1905 and 1911, when ' France had accepted humiliation to avoid plunging Europe into bloodshed. Then came the war of 1914-18. What had Hitler to say of this? In his book "Mem Kampf," he said: "I sank on my knees and thanked Heaven in the fullness of my heart for being allowed to live through such times." "But don't think Hitler is an exception," said Sir Robert. Referring to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 he recalled how the King of Prussia had in letters to his wife "thanked God for this chance to kill thousands of Frenchmen." "Punch" had run a parody of the letters which ran: — Thanks to the Lord, my dear Augusta,} We have hit the French an awful buster. Ten thousand French we have sent below, ; Praise God from Whom all blessings flow. Possibly from the time of Frederick the Great, certainly during the next three German generations, Prussian Germany had tried to annex not onlyj the -ejar%- but Heaven,. ,said. Sir Robert,} andvwheri'Vit, found that Heaven could j not be annexed it discarded it. So it i could be seen that Hitler did not come from nowhere. During these generations the German people had been taught to regard wars as salutary and necessary. So during 75 years Europe had had five wars. Many people tried hard to believe the best of the Nazis, but it was always the worst that prevailed. The Nazis were simply incapable of peace. It was not their idea of life. Every 15 years, on an average, the Germans! sought war. i PREPARATION AND PRELUDE. The first three of these five wars had been the preparation and prelude. The fourth was a great bid and it had.only just failed, and after it everyone had been so anxious to forget the war thatthey forgot, too, the butcher bird which had destroyed 400,000,000 happinesses; they had forgotten its5 cruelty, its harsh peace terms at Brest-Litovsk and elsewhere when the Germans had had the upper hand, the indiscriminate sinkings, prison camps, use of gas, and cold-blooded cruelty. Thus everything was blamed on to the Treaty of Versailles. The whining bully was picked up, dusted, and put on his feet. His former victims lent him money and he merely set about preparing for his next feast on them. The Treaty of Versailles had practically nothing to do with Germany's fifth war, nor Germany's war on private life and family life, on Christian culture, the burning of books and assaults on university culture. Most of the Treaty of Versailles had been dead long before 1939. The Nazis had by then gained more in Czecho-Slovakia, Austria, and Poland than they had lost in Europe. The truth was that the Germans' long training in militarism had led to expansion in Europe and then the desire for world domination. The setback of 1914-18 had not been sufficient to stem this thirst for domination. The butcher bird had been foiled but was not repentant. INBORN CRUELTY. Sir Robert then dealt with the manner in which the.Nazis had capitalised the German blind faith in a mystical destiny and how they had plunged the world into war in which their inborn c cruelty had again manifested itself in hideous destruction from the air. He '• gave quotations from many documents c of this cruelty, how Hitler had proclaimed that he would not wagel war ' on women and children and had t promptly proceeded to do so. No one * could believe him, any more than his £ predecessors, all of whom had been * completely unable to keep their word, c How was it that the Germans had surrendered themselves so freely to j such a man? The answer was that the j remnants of Prussian conscience were £ easily satisfied by, the drug of mechanical obedience to any order, however | cruel. Prussianism, militarism, lust for j world conquest and Nazism —that was € the sequence which had made the Ger- ~ mans the exponents of incredible 1 cruelty. Like the butcher bird, they a complained of being attacked by t someone half their size and then pro- A ceeded to devour that object. c Of the Nazi outlook towards Christianity, Sir Robert quoted a remark by Hitler to Mussolini that "Christianity was the Bolshevisation of. antiquity." The Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs had said: "The Fuhrer is the carrier of a new revelation. Hitler is the true Holy Ghost." Pastor Niemoller had been clapped into solitary confinement for life for expressing concern at the honours being bestowed on a man that were due only to God. Christianity had i been rejected because it was too gentle to be compatible with world domination. Jesus was an enemy because He £ had spoken of a Kingdom not of this 1 world. ' c HITLER NO ACCIDENT. n How the Nazi leaders had risen from p

comparative penury to become men of vast fortunes was also dealt with by Sir Robert, who explained that the calm acceptance of this amassing of wealth, which was.not compatible with Socialism, even the national brand, by the German people was a clear indication how the dulling of their consciences with visions of material gain and the banishing of Christian principles had worked.

"Hitler is no accident," said Sir Robert in conclusion. "We are fighting against evil things which have possessed the German people for three weary generations. The butcher bird is furiously at his habit again. .. . .

Since the fall of France the brunt of eliminating this horror has fallen on us. ... We believe we have the good wishes of all that is best in the world and we accept them. By the grace of God and for the salvation of mankind, we shall rescue the earth from these evils."