Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, WEDNESDAY, NOV. 1, 1933 THE PRUSSIAN SPIRIT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18234, 1 November 1933, Page 6

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, WEDNESDAY, NOV. 1, 1933 THE PRUSSIAN SPIRIT

The arrest of a British journalist has served to direct attention once more to the menace to world peace offered by German nationalism. The old Prussian spirit lia.s become manifest in a marked degree, and coinli

lions in Germany coincide very close ly with those which pertained in the years preceding the war, when the Kaiser, professing peaceful intentions, was doing his best to build up a military position that would give him dominance over the rest of the world In those days it was said that the capture of a spy meant another battleship for the Imperial Navy, and not infrequently the nation was worked up into a frenzy of spy mania with tno object of stimulating the demand ' for increased “defence.” The same game is probably being played to-day, though the arrest of Mr. Noel Ranter; is due primarily to Nazi annoyance at disclosure of the military trend of the national hysteria and a desire to in-; 'timidato foreign correspondents generally and to prevent them tolling the truth about German activities. The recent parade at Munich, for his re-; port of which Air. Ranter was arrest-j cd, was little different from a demon-} stration tit I’otsdam on September 17, when General Goering made a triumphal entry through streets beflagged with the old German colors and in an impassioned speech called for revival of the old Prussian lighting spirit. This sort of thing has been going on all over Germany and has been freely reported until now. Nor has it, been possible to conceal the real purport of the Hitler policy, especially in regard to the youth movement and the educational trend. English papers published a few weeks weeks ago the description of a manual prepared for use in German schools and universities by Professor Ewald Banse, one of a group of professors appointed to teach the principles of war and defence. The design of the book is to make the young German war-minded. It, is an adulation of war. Was is not only inevitable. War is good. It is the universal renovator; it builds while it destroys. It is the highest form of physical and moral exercise to which the contemplations of the human mind have thus far attained. Professor Banse, therefore, asserts that everybody should know that war is nothing extraordinary, nothing criminal and no sin against humanity. Animals and plants, he remarks, are always at war in their struggle for existence. Ought one to wonder, then, that, it can break out among men? lie continues: “War can only be, endured, however, by a nation of which every member has j known for years and is convinced in his innermost soul that his life belongs to the ,Slate, only to the State and for ever to the State as the guardian of nationality, mother tongue and culture.” The professor then writes the following sentences ruled by the pronoun “we,” without explaining who “we” are: “We do not want to paint war rosy; we do not desire it at all; but we are convinced that. it. will come ami that the way to freedom can only be reached through it.” Perhaps this is related to an earlier passage assorting that: “All the whining for freedom from Versailles lends to nothing and only makes us ridiculous if wo do not tako our fate in our own hands and with readiness of spirit and knowledge

work for war.” The professor’s proposal is that military science should be taught in schools by means of lessons and drill. .Military ideas should be introduced into all lessons and so many hours a week should be devoted lo military drill, field work, and kriogspiel (war games). .By these means ho hopes to turn boyhood’s love of heroic deeds and ol' playing at robbers and soldiers to the benefit of the Fatherland. Under a true system of State eugenics—goes on the professor —warlike individuals must be particularly encouraged lo procreate. Women when their new-born babies are put in their arms must firmly contemplate the ultimate destruction of these infants. Babies of all nations are brought forth to kill each other periodically when mature. The dying warrior must shed his blood as in glad liberation to his “National God.” The study of how bacterial infect ion may be spread with most deadly results among enemy nations must lie pursued with spiritual conviction. And so on. , “ In no other nation but one to-day,” comments Air. .T. L. Garvin in tin- Observer, “is this kind of infernal preaching not only allowed but officially instituted, salaried, and encouraged. Of what avail arc .medium cal cures, such as have been impel eat ly discussed those lasi 10 years, for a mental perversion so monstrous. No human being outside Germany can exaggerate the demented barbarism oi this doctrine. The thing is not a fantastic aberration on the part ol a few morbid individuals. II is a deliberate philosophy with which a whole people is to be methodically inoculated by order of the omnipotent state. It means torture or death to be a known or suspected pacifist in Germany to-day. It is much more dangerous than to be a Jew. Crushed without compunction are the historic and eternal English-speaking notions of free speech, free meeting, free publication If wc were blind. Hitlerism would mean again the tramp to death for millions in other countries.” But fortunately the world is not blind, and such action as the Nazi Goxcinmenl is taking against ioreign journalists serves only to heighten suspicion regarding the bellicose aims of the present rulers of Germany. Jhe .supreme desire .necessarily of these rulers is to gain time and to delude or lull foreign criticism while pushing on with their preparations, but such is the German mentality that they cannot sec that the course they are pursuing provokes distrust of their pacific protestations and gives strength to the French resolution not to disarm until Hitlerism ceases to preach the infernal idealism of wound to give intelligible assurances of safe behavior.