The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1934. A YEAR OF HITLERISM.

Evening Star, Issue 21633, 31 January 1934, Page 6

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1934. A YEAR OF HITLERISM.

Yesterday will have been a great day in Germany. It marked the passing of one year during which Herr Hitler has Ijield rule. In an address to “Nazi members of the Reichstag ” —it would have been enough to say “ members ” —the leader was to sum up his achievements. Elsewhere there were to be “ numerous Nazi demonstrations on military lines,” and they would be worth seeing, because the Nazis do those things particularly well. They would be wonderful celebrations, but they could not be more wonderful than the year it was their function to extol. On January 30 twelve months ago, after failures to form a Government under any other head, the despised Hitler was called in to be Chancellor. Associates were given to him meant to keep him safe, but he soon got rid of those. At the election in March, held when one party had control of the wireless, opposition papers being suspended and opposition meetings prohibited or broken up, the Nazis and their Nationalist allies obtained a bare majority of the Reichstag. The fire at the Reichstag building, as it was used by the dominant parties, was a providential aid to that achievement, irrespective of who may have caused it. Then the Nazis absorbed the Nationalists. Other parties were forced to disband themselves and their property was confiscated, all this being done under the forms of the Constitution. The Jews were harried and exiled, and the concentration camps began. “ Goodbye ” was said to the League and to the Disarmament Conference. The “ election ” of November was a greater fare© than that of March, because the only candidates were Nazis, but it gave to the Government the ratification, this time overwhelmingly complete, which it desired. Herr Hitler had all his enemies under his feet. Even the great States were unable to defy him. He reduced them to something like the position of counties in the interest of his central authority.

The leader’s ascent, it has been said, is even more romantic than that of Lenin and Mussolini, because, like Napoleon, he imposed himself on a country not his own. If what we have recapitulated were all the triumph of the half-educated Austrian with the hypnotic oratory i£ would be a sorry story. But there is more. A proportion of the influence that has been exerted by Herr Hitler has been that of a reformer. In a larger degree it has been that of a revivalist. He found Germans weak and discouraged, and he has given them a new faith in themselves. That faith has taken some of the worst forms, making new alarms for Europe, up to the present, but there are signs that he may be able to convert it into more wholesome channels. Claims to have established unity and reduced unemployment, making the beginning of a return to new prosperity, could be judged more easily by the world at large if dissentients in Germany were allowed to speak and if it knew the numbers in the concentration camps. What the best Nazis believe of Hitler admits no doubt. We can imagine them as saying, with entire conviction, “ there was a man raised up by God, whose name was ’Adolf.” What Dr G. P. Gooch, an English Liberal best known for his ‘ Documents on the Origins of the War,’ has to say is slightly different. Arguing that the peace terms were made too hard for Germany and that revolt against them was inevitable, Hitler, lie tells us, was the child of Poincare and Clemenceau. But that is only part of tho truth. Tho peace was made less by those “ diefiards ” than by the public opinions of

all the countries that Germany had made to suffer. If it was wrong, we were all wrong together, except a very few whose “ advanced ” opinions made the best aid for Germany during the war, and in that sense we were all Herr Hitler’s begetters. Sir Eric Geddes, who was a war time Minister, makes the point plain in a letter to ‘ The Times.’ In recent years of a world grown wiser it has been a reproach to him that he enunciated the most extreme slogan of the “ khaki ” election, epitomising all the rest, the advice to “ squeeze Germany like a lemon till the pips squeak.” He did originate the phrase, he explains, but only after, in successive election speeches, he had urged that indemnities must be limited if they were not to hurt their recipients as much as Germany, and was howled down for being “ pro-German ” and “ weak-kneed.” So he coined his phrase, to express what the Government would do its best to do, “in obedience to the popular desire.” Essentially he coined it to preserve his seat, which was a poor object, but a common one. In effect the treaty has been continually eased for Germany, and the country that' staked its chances upon a war, and continues to extol that means of settling differences when it is sought to kindle real enthusiasm and unity among its people, should be the last to complain of consequences when war goes wrong. "With a lot *of folly and a lot of rant, Herr Hitler has stood for some ideals for the German people of which the most enlightened conscience of the whole world must approve. “He is by far the best of his group,” it has been said. Since his power is complete in his own country, it can only be hoped that his own best will now triumph, alike over those alloys with which it is mixed and oyer lieutenants who inJ spire no sort of respect.