A DRAMATIC MESSAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 31, 6 February 1941, Page 8

A DRAMATIC MESSAGE

Mr. Wendell Willkie is now on his way home to America, carrying with him and leaving behind him lasting memories of his brief dramatic visit to Britain in wartime. Whatever conclusions he may draw from his observations—and he rightly refused to be rushed on this point in his final interviews —the breezy personality of this independent and unofficial, but fully representative, American has o-reatly cheered the British people in their ordeal. And he himself in turn has been profoundly impressed! with the solidarity of a united people, miraculously fortunate, as he said, in their ideal leadership by the Prime Minister at this" time. Noth- j ing. however, in the incident? of his tour and his terse comments could have been more striking than the message he left on the eve of his departure for transmission to the German people: My family name is not Willkie, but Wilcke, he said. I am of purely German descent. My grandparents left Germany ninety years ago in protest against autocracy and because they demanded the right to live as free men. lam proud of my German blood, but I hate aggression and tyranny. Tell the German people that my sympathies are shared to the full by the overwhelming majority of my fellow-countrymen .of German descent. They, too, believe in freedom and in human rights. Tell the German people that we German-Ameri-cans reject and hate the aggression and lust for power of the present German Government. Mr. Willkie's ancestors, with tens of thousands of other Germans, left their fatherland at that time as a protest against the suppression of liberty by Bismarck and his fol-lowers,-and settled in free countries all over the world. Their love of freedom and hatred of tyranny still endure.