The War Marches On

Northland Age, Volume IX, Issue 56, 23 April 1940, Page 1

The War Marches On

T HE invasion of Norway seems to have been planned with German thoroughness and efficiency, but the success in effecting a landing at several points could have not been accomplished so easily and swiftly ! without something very like treachery i on the part of at least some of those responsible for the country’s defence. Norway is a poor country, but living at a time when the army must keep the head she had prepared for the eventuality of an attack. Yet at Oslo and Bergen Guman troops were allowed to land in sufficient force to quickly sweep away the slight resistance. An enterprising Am rican newspaper man, Leland S'owe, now telegraphs to the “Chicago Daily News” an account of a gigantic conspiracy in which Norwegians in high military and civil office combined to betray their country to the Germans. When the German troopships sailed into Oslo Fjord the the mines were disconnected, the forts silenced, and the crews of the three warships ordered to land and offer no resistance. It was only the unforseen return of the 1 minelayer “Olaf Trygvason,” which i promptly opened fire on the invaders, sinking the cruiser “Emden” and a submarine boat by torpedo, that prevented the landing being quite unre- I sisted. The Government, bewildered, offered their resignation which the King, who had received a German ultimatum to appoint a puppet Government of pro-German Nazis, refused to accept and left the capital. It was only the action of a handful of Norwegian troops who resolutely opposed the advancing Germans to cover the King’s retreat that led the Government to order resistance to the invasion rather than follow the Danish i example of submission. With the fate of Poland before their eyes, one can hardly blame them for their hesitation. Norway has no standing army though every man up to the age of 55 serves in the national militia, part of which is called up each year for some 90 days’ training, which had not then begun. There was plain proof of the treachery of at least some of the military officers; there were doubts as to how far that treachery had penetrated. Under these circumstances, any Government, even the most patriotic, was justified in hesitating to risk condemning their country to the fate of Belgium in the last war, even if it had been sure of prompt Allied aid. Mr. Stowe, who doubtless brought a creative imagination into play to piece out his facts, adds a dramatic touch on the part of the German Embassy’. On the Friday before the fateful Monday of the landing, when German troopships were actually on their way, a select audience of some two hundi-ed influential persons at Oslo were invited to view a film of the destruction of Poland, which doubtless left little to the imagination from the point of gruesomeness, after which the Minister blandly explained that the pictures of the horrors of w’ar was really a lesson on the wisdom of people who happened to be in the path of German ambitions remaining at peace with the mighty all-conquering Reich. For brutal insolence this would be hard to beat, even from the German record. A Greek Parallel The Greek historian, Thucydides, records an incident that happened some twenty-four centuries ago. The people of Athens, then in process of building up an empire that finally brought them to ruin, decided that it was advisable that the island of Melos, an independent State, should be absorbed. Without any other excuse and without warning, an overwhelming fleet and army arrived before the island and landed an Athenian envoy. To the rulers of Melos, according to the historian, he delivered this speech, which had at least the merit of frankness: “We are not going to trouble you with any fine words or long speeches to prove that it is only justice that we should rule, because we overthrew the or that we are attacking you because you have injured us. You know as well as we that in human affairs there is no question of justice except between equals, and that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” And when the Melos spokesman answered as King Haakon answered the Germans, that they would resist, trusting in the eternal justice of Heaven and the strength of their Spartan allies, he was given the grim answer: “So far as the gods are concerned, we do not think we shall get less of their favour than you, for we are not doing or claiming anything with what men believe about the gods, or practise among themselves. We believe that the gods, and we know that men by an inexorable law of Nature rule wherever they can. We did not make that law and we are not the first to make use of it;

we found it in existence and we shall leave it to exist for ever after us; we merely make use of it, knowing that you and everyone else, if they had our power, would do the same.” What Nazi-icm Means There could be no clearer or batter statement of the Nazi religion and philosophy, and it is to prevent that principle being dominant again in the world that we are at war with Germany. Though on the surface Athens was a dcnv cracy—we have inherited the word and the system from them—it was really a class State resting on a slave basis, and outside their own city, and in their imperial anifcPiens, their idea of rule was that of master and slave. Christianity, with its doctrine of the infinite worth of the individual and the inalienable freedom of the children of God, is supposed to have changed all that, but the doctrine has penetrated very little into j our politics, and the Nazis have deliberately gone back to the old masterj and-slave doctrine of rule in its most j extreme form. The individual is nothing, the State is all. And the ! State is ruled by a hierachy of leaders, leaders with leaders below them that i they command, leaders above them I that they must obey, till at the apex there is the god-like leader, fuehrer or duce, whose lightest word is law and justice, religion and morality. And the significant thing is that this religion is spreading, that it has its fanatic devotees, its advocates and apostles in all countries. It seems to have spread enough in Norway to enable the country to be betrayed. In Rumania, where a German invasion is with good reason feared, the Nazi movement grew almost unchecked until some of its members murdered the Prime Minister, when the Party was outlawed and their Iron Guard dissolved. Now they are back again more powerful than ever. In Holland there is an active Nazi Party of Dutchmen prepared to aid in the enslavement of their country. In Sweden, now in dire peril, sympathy with Nazi ideals is wide-spread among the upper classes. Even in France, with their hereditary hatred of everything German, the same tendency is apparent. In Britain the Fascist movement has dug itself in more deeply among certain classes than most people are aware of. Most people are inclined to treat lightly the assertion that in future, even in the near future, the world will have to choose between Fascism qnd Communism as their method of government. Yet there is more than a possibility that it may come to that. There is thus a good deal more involved in the present war than the downfall of Hitler and his gang in Germany. That is but one incident in the struggle. It is war between the Christian ideals of freedom and justice and the old heathen ideals of brutal power through force. Even the democracies, our own as much as any others, have halted between the two opinions, paying lip-service to the one while practising the other. That cannot last, and has now been brought to the test. In the crisis of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, the fame of whose wisdom and statesmanship has grown steadily since his death, said a country could not exist half-slave and half-free. That is the truth, and is largely the world’s position to-day. It has to choose, and on its choice depends its future.