Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, OCT, 7, 1942. TWO OPPOSITE PICTURES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXII, Issue 264, 7 October 1942, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, OCT, 7, 1942. TWO OPPOSITE PICTURES.

There is an analogy between the story of the boy whistling to keep up his courage while traversing a dark lane at night and the latest broadcast of Herman Goering. Speaking at _a harvest thanksgiving service in Berlin, his speech, which was broadcast for the edification chiefly of Germany’s enemies, painted a bright picture of the lteich food position, obviously to keep up the people’s waning courage, and contained some typical Nazi boasting. The world was told that Germany- can no longer be blockaded, for she is being fed at the expense of Ihe occupied countries. It was the blockade which brought Germany to her knees in 1918, and Hitler’s strategy has been devised to prevent a recurrence of that disaster, hence his occupation of Continental countries to not only wage war against the blockade but to despoil in feeding his armies. Goering’s admission that the occupied countries are feeding Germany is evidence of the tightness of this blockade. Germany, lie says, has had a good harvest and potatoes, butter, and meat are so, plentiful that rations in the occupied lands and in Germany soon will be increased, in spite of the fact that “6,000,000 foreign workers and more than 5,000,000 war prisoners have to be fed.” These were bright words and were accompanied by typical boasts that Britain could not win the w r ar and would be repaid for her bombing raids on German cities, and with ridicule for America; but underlying them was a note of anxiety when German people had to be told “it was a crime to be defeatists when German soldiers were gaining victory after victory.” The reason for the tone of the speech is clearly proved by these words. The second picture is given by the Christian Science Monitor. It is a grim story of the famine towards which Europe is headed. “The food position in Germany and all the occupied countries is going from bad to worse,” states this wellinformed journal, which emphasises that Germany cannot expect appreciable exports of grain from the Ukraine before 1944-45, and the large reserves with which she entered the war have been exhausted. The plight of the occupied States to-day is a striking commentary upon Nazi despoliation, and Goering knows as well as any other German that the prospect of a higher ration is poor. Indeed, he makes a deliberate threat that it is the occupied countries and not Germany that will starve. Freedom from want—one of Mr Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” — is a powerful factor in the Uuited Nations’ war aims, and because Hitler cannot feed them the people of Greece are as far as possible being saved from want by Allied countries which are sending shiploads of wheat —mercy shipments—which competent observers declare will not be sufficient even to save thousands from starvation. Greece’s plight this winter may well be that of other occupied countries and even Germany where, it is stated by the correspondent of a Swiss paper, Goering’s speech left a deep and unfavourable impression on the mass of the people. Years of sacrifice of

butter for guns have been followed by greater sacrifices, with the promised victory no closerThey have good reason for a defeatest mood.