MENACED AND UNAFRAID.

Evening Star, Issue 23653, 13 August 1940, Page 6

MENACED AND UNAFRAID.

Me Amery, Secretary for India, who used to be described as a pocket dynamo for energy, had some' pertinent things to say in his speech at Blackpool in reply to the German menace, and said them with all the old vigour. If the latest Hitler programme is to fulfil itself England should bo in the throes of invasion or half-buried under the weight of aerial bombardments by now. There have been rehearsals for the aerial part of the great attempt, but they have not been promising. Mr Amery puts the issues. “If Hitler thinks our spirit can be broken by mass attack from the air upon our industries and shipping he will find himself grievously mistaken. , , .

He has got to come over and take us and break us as he lias taken and broken others. Let him try. If he does he will fail disastrously, and. his failure will bring the end nearer than anything else could possibly do. But if the stakes are too high for him, and he gives njS the attempt, that, too, will be a failure. All the world will know the tide has turned, and that sooner or later his fate will he sealed.”

How far the spirit of the English is from being broken may be gathered from their half-jocular, half-con-temptuous treatment of the Fubrer's leaflets. It was a typical misunderstanding of the national ways and character that made him scatter these over English ground. Only colossal vanity could persuade him that reports of his last speech would impress Britons as they, do the subservient millions of Germany. If half of them had not read it before that was not from lack of opportunity. In sharp contrast to the practice of the totalitarian countries, whose abject peoples are not allowed to read more than the words of their own rulers, meant to deceive them, the address had been published in all the papers three weeks before. If it was not read, that would be merely because the rant aud fustian of Hitler’s 1 addresses differ so little, from one hysterical production to another, that to know one is to know them all, in effect. No one would be punished for picking up samples of this masterpiece, as in the case of a German showing interest in a British note from the skies, and what was done with them was typically English and practical. Those which were dropped in one place, at least, were sold as souvenirs, bringing £26 for the Red Cross. Two which were auctioned at a Rotary Club, lunch realised 255. It would seem they were not numerous. Their old habit of bombing the Red Cross when it is seen will be pursued henceforward by Nazis with an added relish. The Nazi tactics, at bottom, are very simple. They resemble those of the Greek invader of ancient Italy, who received a Roman ambassador, Fabricius, and attempted first to bribe him, then to subdue him by fear. “ Knowing that ho had never seen an elephant, he ordered the biggest he had to be armed, aud placed behind a curtain in the room where they were to hold their conference. This was accordingly done, and upon a sign given the curtain was withdrawn, upon which the elephant, raising his trunk over Fabricius’s head, made a horrid aud frightful noise. Fabricius turned round, without the least discomposure, and said, smiling: ‘‘Neither your gold yesterday, nor your beast today, has made any impression upon mo.” The Nazis’ bribes have had their effect in Europe. Their tanks and aeroplanes, answering to the elephants of King Pyrrhus, will be countered well henceforward. In the latest air raids on England, the defenders have inflicted far more damage upon the enemy than they have suffered. When tho superiority of armaments is on their side it will go hard with Hitler, and all the countries he has overrun will contribute their part to his undoing.