CHANGED OUTLOOK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 31 December 1940, Page 5

CHANGED OUTLOOK

AMERICAN ATTITUDE I TOWARDS WAR DEFINITE OPINION GROWING I HITLERISM EXPOSED [British Official Wireless] RUGBY, 29th December. When Sir Walter Layton returned the other day from a mission on behalf of the Ministry of Supply in the United States he spoke of the impression made upon him by evidence gained during the visit of the change that country had undergone in its attitude to the war. Events of the last nine months had exposed Hitlerism in its naked evil, arousing deep instincts of chivalry in a people, to many of whom a year and more ago the issues at stake on this side of the Atlantic were remote and indefinite. These events also left Americans in no doubt that the call to defend the way of life and the values they cherish might sound suddenly and soon if Hitler were not held in check by the continuing resistance of Britain. The American spirit never accepted menace to itself tamely, nor suffered wrong to others in silence.

In an article contributed to a London Sunday newspaper a leading American newspaper proprietor observes how, before the subjugation of France and the Lowlands most Americans thought Hitler’s statement about the Germans as Herrenvolk, supported by the resources of a conquered world, worthy only of the consideration accorded the ranting of a madman. But in another recent poll 80 per cent, affirmed belief in a definite Nazi plan to make slaves of the people in Europe and conquer American trade and industry.

“This change in outlook in a country with a free, impartial Press, served by its own objective reporters on both sides of the European war front can be accounted for only by the self-revelations of the Nazis themselves,” he says.