HOPE DEFERRED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 83, 5 October 1942, Page 4

HOPE DEFERRED

When Hitler spoke at the Sportspalast last week, he told the German people that the main task now facing the nation was "to organise the vast occupied regions for the purpose of warfare and also for feeding our people." "Our achievements in the occupied 'countries," he declared, "are beyond imagination. Only a few miles behind the battle front stands the agricultural front. Soon we will not have to send manufactures to occupied Russia." Hitler, the aggressor, was endeavouring, with all the persuasion at his command, to give his war-weary followers some crumbs of comfort. "I have given you victories," he said, in effect. "Soon I will give you some of the fruits of victory." Now Goering, Hitler's appointed successor, has spoken, but the best he has to offer is an increase in the ration of meat by two-thirds of an ounce—but only in raid-threatened areas! Two-thirds of an ounce of meat to compensate the German people for his failure to make good his boast that no British bombs would fall on German territory! Goering certainly followed his leader when he spoke of the wealth that was to be found in the ravaged territories of Russia —fats, iron, coal—but there were reservations, important reservations calculated to dampen any feelings of hope which Hitler's words may have aroused in German breasts. After telling the German workers that they would have to work harder to get the spoils from Russia, Goering complained that the Russians had burnt everything. "But," he declared, "we shall rebuild, and / hope that next year a further large increase (in food supplies) can be achieved." In the words we have italicised lies the difference, the vital difference, between the promises of Hitler and his second in command. It is a difference that the German people, and the world, will not be slow to appreciate.