GERMANS WANT PEACE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4956, 16 February 1937, Page 3

GERMANS WANT PEACE

PEOPLE NOT ANTI-SEBIITIC. DOCTOR'S THREE YEARS IN BERLIN. Sydney, January 29. “The people of Germany want peace, not war,” said Dr. R. Farrell, who returned by the Oronsay after spending three years at Berlin University, where he studied philosophy, and German literature and language. “Memories of the last war are still clear in the minds of Germans over 30 years of age,” Dr. Farrell said. “They believe Hitler when he says he wants peace. It is only a few enthusiast, anxious to obtain further territory, who favour war. The desire of the Government is to attain its end by peaceful means. The chief aim is to restore Germany to her former position as a great Power. Whether the achievement of that aim will mean war, it is hard to say.” Dr. Farrell said that the officials in Germany were very anxious to obtain colonies. The nation was definitely frightened of Russia. . Hitler’s Hold on People. “Hitler is not the strong man that Mussolini is,” Dr. Farrell continued. “He has a fascination over the people. If Hitler collapsed the Nazi movement might not survive. His amazing personality seems to hold it together. If he went, Goering would probably suceed him. “There is no organised opposition to Hitler in Germany although many people are against him on principle. On the matter of the reoccupation of the Rhine, all Germany was behind him.”

Dr. Farrell said that the German people as a whole were not antiSemitic. The feeling was limited largely to a clique. Jews were still to be seen in the fashionable quarter of Berlin. “The anti-Semitic feeling cannot be kept going artificially,” he added. Dr. Farrell said that Germans entertained the friendliest possible feeling towards Britain. During the years he had lived in Berlin, he had received nothing but courtesy. He did not think that, as a whole, the German people were jingoistic.

“The Germans tend to go to extremes,” he said. “They are intensely individualistic. It appears that the suppression of free thought is the outcome of a former excess of it. The Germans are great theorists, and they will follow theories passionately and sometimes blindly.”