BOOK REVIEW

Grey River Argus, 27 August 1941, Page 7

BOOK REVIEW

“My Secret Diary” Ambassadoi- Dodd’s diary is being issued by the Left Book Club. This is a book of immense fascination and historical importance. It will probably rank as the most valuable of all the “Source books" for the period from Hitler’s accession to power up to the outbreak of the war, when the history of our troubled age is written in distant years to come. This journal will be regarded as a priceless source of information. reviewed by f. a. horniBROOK. LONDON, March 22, 1941. “My Secret Diary” (1933-1938), written by the late William Dodd, who was the American Ambassador to Hitler, is a revealing document. Mr Dodd was evidently a real humanist, and he was amazed at the deceit and trickery which was going on in ' the different countries which he, as Ambassador, had ample opportunity to study. For example he tells us that the whole of the Disarmament. Conference at Geneva was deliberately wrecked by the armament makers who poured out money like water in buying the Press, politicians, and doing their utmost generally to disorganise the League, a feat which I they accomplished quite successfully. Nor does he excuse his own nation in this connection —he tells us that the “merchants of death’’ of England France and America were simply pouring armaments into every country. All this was in 1934, and he says that in November of that year, Sir Eric Phipps, the English Ambassador in Berlin, had sat at a meeting of the British Cabinet and had told Mr MacDonald, who was then Prime Minister, and the other Ministers, including Baldwin and Chamberlain, that real story of what was happening in Germany; but no notice was taken beyond a diplomatic protest. A very interesting part of this diary tells how Mr Dodd asked Sir Eric Phipps whether the Armstrong Vickers armament works which are linked to the British Government, had sold war materials to Germany just before the arrival of the British Committee to negotiate payment of the debts that Germany owed to Lancashire for cotton; and that Sir Eric disclaimed all knowledge of this. “Since then,” Mr Dodd remarked, “Sir Eric has avoided seeing me alone.” SUPPORT FOR MOSLEY. Another interesting part of the diary is Mr Dodd’s conversation with the Dutch Minister when the talk turned to Sir Henri Deterding (the Oil King), who was coming to see Hitler. Mr Dodd asked: “Does Sir Henri support Sir Oswald Mosley, the English Fascist ?” and the Ambassador replied, “I know Sir Henri well, and I am sure he would give Mosley £lOO,OOO to help him win.”

But a still more interesting part of the diary is Mr Dodd’s interview with Henry Sinclair, the American oil millionaire, when Sinclair, having stated his views on armaments. Dodd asked. “You mean by this that all the world should arm to the teeth, and later either destroy all the arms because they are obsolete, or start a war and kill the people thereby using the arms ?” Sinclair’s reply was typical of that particular stupid type of successful business man, he said, “Yes, it is a struggle for the survival of the fittest,” whereupon Dodd crushingly retorted: “No, the destruction of the civilised peoples and the survival of the least fit.” Then he goes on to say: “Sinclair’s view is that of many eminent business men everywhere—the Du Ponts of the United States, the Krupps and Thyssens of Germany, the Armstrong Vickers people in England and the Schneider-Crusot interest in France.” FINANCIAL LEPERS. It is no use our talking of building a new order of things after this war as long as these financial lepers are still allowed free. Any civilised community would isolate a small-pox case or call upon the authorities to destroy a mad dog. The harm that a dog .suffering from hydrophobia would do in any community is infinitesimal compared with the harm these monied criminals are prepared to do to humanity for the sake of dividends. They can buy newspapers, influence public opinion, and get elected to Parliament, where they talk with their tongues in their cheeks of disarmament and chuckle to each other afterwards at their cleverness in fooling the people. Mankind is slow to learn, but if they do not learn now who are the real enemies of society, then there is no future fo r the race, and it is just as well to be as brutally honest as the Germans and tell women that their main object in life should be to produce children, especially male children, for cannon fodder.