SIGNS OF STRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 116, 19 May 1941, Page 6

SIGNS OF STRESS

NAZI EDIFICE

COMMENT ON HESS'S FLIGHT

RUGBY, May 17

Mr. Arthur Greenwood, Minister without portfolio, speaking at Deptford, said: "When a man occupying such an important official position in the Nazi hierarchy as did Herr Hess flees his country and puts himself in the hands of the enemy, it looks as though all is not well on the German home front. Disunity, doubt, and disillusionment are growing and will continue to grow within the German Reich. The Nazi ■foundation upon which Germany's grandiose edifice of military aggression rests has begun to show signs of internal stress and strain. I will not say it is cracking, but it is certainly becoming chipped. It should be additional encouragement and incentive for us to increase our efforts still further and endure still greater hardships to speed our victory. "We have proved that our spirit is unbreakable, and our island is unconquerable, but we have still to make our arms irresistible. Let us, then, draw new faith, strength, and energy from the knowledge that all is not well within Germany. Let us redouble our efforts to increase the stress and strain which has already begun to undermine Nazi unity and loyalty, till the pressure brings the Nazi tyrant down into the dust of defeat and retribution." REAL LIFE MELODRAMA. The Home Secretary, Mr. Morrison, speaking at Hackney, said: "We can at least be grateful to Herr Hess for providing the British people with a good deal of entertainment in the midst of grim times. He has been the hero or the villain of a piece of real life melodrama that would have won rounds of applause from the Drury Lane gallery in the old days. "I have no Hess guess. Instead. I will give a few hard facts. Hess. Hitler's right hand man, is like the rest of them, a brutal thing, whose hands, like his master's, are stained with some of the worst political crimes of modern times. Hess takes his share of the guilt for the murder of hundreds of comrades in 1934. "So highly did Hitler think of his peculiar capacities, that he made it his task to out-Gestapo the Gestapo This gangster is now in our hands. He is going to stay in our hands. It does not matter what kind of animal he is—whether he is rat number one of the Trojan horse, or just over here in the vain hopp of finding innocents to play with. The main thing is that he is caged.

"There is just one more fact to add to this. Whatever his reason for coming here, the German people, to put it mildly, are very, much shaken by the whole episode. They chose between two or three different explanations, all of them equally unpalatable Meanwhile. w;e have seen the edifying sight of Goebbels spending the last few days revolving rapidly on his axis— chasing his own tail."—B.O.W.