DIVERGENT IDEAS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 156, 30 December 1940, Page 6

DIVERGENT IDEAS

NEW ORDER IN EUROPE

HITLER AND THE POPE

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, December 28

The "Yorkshire Post," commenting on the Pope's five peace points, recalls his statement of a year ago and says:—

"Between these two pronouncements, separated by twelve months of shattering events, there is a significant difference. A year ago the Pope was chiefly concerned to emphasise the principles which the outbreak of the war violated. In this year's Christmas message he turns his eyes towards the future. He speaks, as Hitler often boastfully speaks, of a new order for Europe. But it 4s soon obvious that between Hitler's new order and the Pope's a bottomless gulf is fixed.

"The first principle of the Pope's new order is a triumph over hatred, and renunciation, therefore, of the systems and practices from which that hatred constantly receives fresh nourishment. Is this one of Hitler's triumphs? Ask the suffering Jews and the tortured Poles, ask the prisoners in the concentration camps, listen to the torrent of hatred and lies Goebbels pours out daily across the world.

"The Pope's second principle is a triumph over mistrust, which is the eternal barrier to that fidelity to the observance of pacts without which it is impossible for nations to live safely together. In October, 1933, Hitler said to Dr. Rauschning: 'I am willing to sign anything. Why should one not please others and facilitate matters for oneself by signing pacts if others believe that something is thereby accomplished or regulated? Why should I not make an agreement in good faith today and unhesitatingly break it tomorrow if the future of the German people demands it?'

"The Pope's fourth principle speaks of a triumph over the germs of conflict in the field of world economy. Here, indeed, is a vital task to which all countries must set themselves most earnestly after the war. But Hitler dreams of accomplishing it by a method of his own. His world economy would be a world-wide system of slavery, with the vassal peoples toiling for the benefit of the German masters."

The "Post" concludes: "The world will say that the Pope has passed sentence on certain unnamed criminals but that there is no mistaking who stands in the dock. The five principles are principles which Hitler and Mussolini have constantly defied. By the Pope's Christian standard the dictator's are decisively condemned."