GERMAN AFFAIRS

Evening Star, Issue 22106, 13 August 1935, Page 11

GERMAN AFFAIRS

OPINIONS FROM DRESDEN HITLER EXTOLLED A letter from Dresden to a resident of Sydney contains interesting information, and was published in the Sydney ‘ Morning Herald ’ as follows : You ask what we are doing in Germany, and especially in Dresden? We are so thanktul that the last minute before Bolshevism overwhelmed us, we have got our Fuhrer. You have no idea how things have changed for the better since 1932. Shortly before Hitler came the Red Government closed my school and the hospital, but 1 am glad, under our Government, now all js reopened. The Hygiene Museum has never been closed, and is the centre now of all hygiene work in Germany, and the Johannstadtcr Krankenhaus is called the hospital Rudolf Hess Krankenhaus, and it is the hospital where they study the methods of healing illness in the natural way besides school medicine. They work in close connection with the Hygiene Museum. , As my school was closed 1 was free and pensioned, and so I live together with my old blind mother, and I do study work, which I am very glad to have a little more time now. I was able to go to America, and 1 have spent there a most interesting time. Being back, I have given this winter many lectures about it to women’s and nurses’ organisations. This summer 1 prepare for a second journey to the United States, as I qm invited by the Carl Schivy Medical Association for a visit of three to five months for lecturing in women’s clubs. I shall start directly after Christmas, 1935, and I shall hope you will come to Germany either this autumn or in the late spring next year, for 1 should be rather sorry not to meet you again. My stay in America was very instructive for me. Everybody was so kind that 1 have seen and heard very many interesting things. I stayed in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, and Bulfalo, and I have seen there all hospitals of interest; but 1 think Americans are in the same difficulties we were in the inflation time from about 1924, and it concerns the social problems as well as the financial. They have splendid equipment of their hospitals, which are on a far higher standard than the average in Germany, but they have difficulties to keep it in good state, for every machinery is expensive, and so in the hospitals the question is where to save the money for it, and they have to spare it either by the reduction of the number of nurses, or by their salaries. On the whole you feel a very great uncertainty in the finam cia! part. I feel that the more, as in our country all is far more steady now. REPORTS DENIED. We live simply, sometimes perhaps for foreigners in a poor way. But we had six million workless people when Hitler came, and we have two millions now, and to think that the rich country of the United States has 11 millions, and as the country is so large, it is also far more difficult to give a social help. But, as I have read the American newspapers, I quite understand that you are doubtful of oui country. I have never read so many iies about us as there. There are large columns in the paper about our church movement, which is a very good thing, for people who were never interested in their religion are now. But, in the American papers, all was written in a political way, which it is not. But there was never a lino about the persecutions of Christians in Russia, where still nowadays they die and ar« shot by hundreds and hundreds. Then they say that in Germany women are pushed out of their professions. It is

not iu that way it is done, but wa had a far too great percentage of boys and girls doing academic study, and so the number of men and women students is reduced, and women students more than men students, as we have still a larger number of workless women with academic education than men, and among the working people so many girls could not marry as the men had no work. So, if girls want to marry and they have a place in a man’s factory, the man may learn the work of the girl, and then he is taken on in her place, so that she may marry and do the household; and so we have among our people a far better family life, for the man earns enough to keep up a family in a healthy and simple way, and in the big towns all slum lodgings are taken oyer by the Government, and street by street these people are put in bettter conditions. The Government does not want mothers worn out with fatigue on landing in hospital, so they give them a good recreation in time by the so-called “ mothers’ help.” They send them for a good rest with good food in the country. During the time the mother is absent, a reasonable woman attends to the household for the husband and children, not without being paid, if not paid by the women’s clubs. There you see some examples how we try to find cheap and good ways for our social problems. And then very often in America they said we want war. Well, I can tell you that we do not. Nobody wishes or wants war. We are very glad to have our freedom, but wo do not want any more of the Versailles Treaty, where so many things were promised to us and never done. Our people have suffered so hard these 10 years after the war, and were so demoralised by being forced to do things which we could not afford, that we are very glad wo have now a leader who says yes when he means yes, and no when it is no.

This has become a very long letter, but I always think those who have been in the war have a feeling and an interest for one another, because they know what death means. We have had death since the war, and we begin to live now because everybody is expected to be honourable and moral' in what they do. lam sure perhaps you will see things absolutely different from your standpoint, hut as you have asked me to tell my opinion, I told you a little hit about our country, and I hope when you come back again you will see the difference, the same people simple and poor, but happy and surer of their lives.