Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1941 THE BUTCHER BIRD AT WORK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 27 October 1941, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1941 THE BUTCHER BIRD AT WORK

THE mentality of the Germans is as stupid as their methods are brutal in dealing with races who will not bow to their will. Practices long common in Czechoslovakia and Po- 1 land against those who will not knuckle under are being used in France, where fifty unfortunate j Frenchmen appear to be the forfeit, paid for each dead Nazi. This is not a very clever method of inducing co-operation. By it the Germans are gaining nothing and are likely to J lose much. No success has yet at- ; tended this way of discovering the Frenchmen who shot the Nazi of- J fleers and the Germans themselves; seemed to be somewhat alarmed at' the feeling that has been aroused throughout France. Resentment j shown by the French has taken the i form of strikes on a large scale, j Never since the German occupation | of France has such feeling been in j evidence among the people. Vichy, is praying for the halting of these vicious reprisals, while it is reported —without confirmation or denial—that the aged Petain wanted to hand himself over as a hostage to prevent the execution of further hostages in 1 Nantes and Bordeaux. This technique is the only one the j Germans know for dealing with in- j surgents. The butcher bird is at i work in many parts of the occupied : territories displaying the same! characteristics which have for so long been associated with Nazism, with | Prussianism before it and with the; Huns before that. Great pains are taken to organise these reprisals with i typical German efficiency so as to get j the maximum moral effect from the most macabre details. In so doing they hope to terrorise the French, and compel them to desist from kill- ! ing any more of their Nazi overlords. The effect seems to have been not to cow the French but to fire the old rebel spirit of France which has more J than once in history risen against the oppressor. < Both President Roosevelt and Mr Churchill have strongly condemned these Nazi excesses. President Roose- ! velt cites them as an example to ; those who talk of negotiating with 1 Hitler. Mr Churchill has said that retribution for them must henceforth be one of the major purposes of the war. “The Nazi atrocities in France and elsewhere, above all behind the German fronts in Russia, surpassed anything since the darkest and most bestial ages of mankind,” he said. “They are but a foretaste of what Hitler would inflict on the British and American peoples if he could get the power.” Thus we have introduced a new war aim as worthy of prosecution as those announced in the Atlantic Charter. Mr Roosevelt makes no mention of retribution, but ; the public utterances of these two 1 leaders against the Nazi butcheries have probably been made in collaboration. The British, the Americans and we ourselves can well ask what there is in these butcheries that people of our countries would not , have to suffer if Hitler ever got the chance to practise them. The butcher bird is constant in its lust for wanton savagery and the extermination of , its prey. It would not change because it happened to be let loose on Britons, Americans or New Zealanders instead of on Czechs, Poles, Belgians, Norwegians, Frenchmen or Russians. Apparently the Russians who have remained in the territory j over-run by the Germans are endur-i ing a hell on earth. General De Gaulle, leader of the Free French movement, has appealed to his stricken countrymen not to kill any more Nazis at present because the time is not ripe for a large-scale uprising against them and the French people would only be bringing on themselves more barbarous reprisals. He tells them, however, that the time j will come for such revolts. While! the Germans continue to hold all i these subject peoples under, they will j not change their terroristic methods. In some respects the record of the German fighting men in actual conflict during this war has not been | unworthy, but where the Gestapo has I had full nlav in thn r-hnl arlmini^trn-

tion of the conquered nations the worst that is in the Nazi character and methods has been exhibited. To ) id the world of that is surely one of the most important of all war aims. The conquered peoples cannot do it by themselves. We may hope that the time will soon come when they may be able to assist from the inside, but the butcher bird can only be made to cease his foul work when the Nazi cult is destroyed through sheer force by the combined might of those nations who are now ranged against it.