TENSION INCREASES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18332, 26 February 1934, Page 7

TENSION INCREASES

ITALY AND GERMANY SUPPORT FOR AUSTRIA GERMAN PRESS CRITICAL (Elec. Tel. Copyright —United Press Assn.) (Received Feb. 26, 11 a.m.) LONDON, Feb. 25. Reports accumulate of increased tension between Rome and Berlin, and also of increased harmony on Rome’s encouragement between Vienna and Budapest. The change in the tone of the German press towards Italy is unmistakable, while the Duce is no longer persona grata in Berlin, where the., newspapers betray fear of the formation oi a customs union between Italy, Austria, and Hungary, which, they argue, could only be a political attempt -to stabilise Austrian independence. The British United Press-Vienna correspondent says that the Government has been informed through the Heimwehr that 10,000 of the so-called “Austrian Legion of Bavaria” is. concentrated on the Austrian frontier, mainly at, Braunau, fidrr Hitler’s birthplace, and is heavily aymed'and ready to cross the border at any moment. The Government is sending troops towards the threatened points: ' V ‘ Thirty-nine bodies have been found in the, Danube, where the sewerage canal empties iiito the river. It is believed that they were carried down by thawing snow. The discovery probably explains the mystery of the disappearance of many of the Socialist dead.

GERMAN PAGANISM ATTACK BY THE POPE MENACE OF GREAT,EVILS VATICAN CITY, Feb. 24. The Pope, apropos of the canonisation of three pietists, one of whom was a German, sternly denounces Hitlerism, saying: “The lives of these saints is a warning against a movement which 'wishes a world return to paganism, with its ancient horrors.”

He adds: “The great and noble German people is at a tragic moment in its history, tragic because of the menace of great evils and terrible because it is a moment of exaltation of thoughts, ideas and practices, neither Christian nor human, and of pride of race, producing a; pride of life far removed from the spirit of Christianity and humanity.” The Pope also denounced Protestant propaganda in Italy as causing grievous spiritual harm ana being an offence to the Divine Redeemer, who suffered much through it. j

“THIRD RELIGION” NEW. GERMANIC CULT BERLIN, Feb. 3. A new impetus in the movement for a “third church” in Germany was regarded in religious circles to-day us having been given by the appointment of Dr. Alfred Rosenberg as the new philosophic dictator for the third Reich. Dr. Rosenberg and other Nazis of like views advocate a Germanic cult founded on Nordic racial principles and Nordic mythology as a substitute for Christianity. The answer of Nazism to “stubborn Christian resistance” will be a resurrection of ancient Teutonic religions that quailed at the thunderbolts oi the God Thor and worshipped at the feet of the mighty Odin. “Germany’s great aim,” said Dr. Rosenberg, “must be one people, one reich, one religion, one church. The one religion, of course, can only be a NordicQyanic one.” Not since Harold Bluetooth established Christianity in Denmark in the tenth century, nor since the decline of the Goths and the Visigoths, and the extension of Frankish supremacy, have the gods of Nordic mythology been worshipped. Balder, son of Odin, and Frigg, his mother; Frey and Loki—the ancient mighties that live now in folklore—are believed to be part and portion of the new Germanic cult, the “third religion” that Dr. Rosenberg and other Nazis consider a substitute for Christianity.

God is to 1 be represented with a spear in his hand, and the war memorials commemorating the years 1914-18 are to become holy symbols for the martyrdom with which the new faith will be associated.

In the mythology of Northern Germany Pdin is recognised not as the creator of the world, but its ruler, king of heaven and earth. As ruler of heaven tiis seat is the palace Hlidskialf in Asgard, whence his two black ravens Hugin (thought) and Munin (memory) fly forth daily to. gather, the tidings of the world. As god "of war he holds his court in»Valhalla, whither come all brave warriors after death to revel in the tumultuous joys in which they took most pleasure while on earth. Frigga is his queen and the, mother of Balder, the Scandinavian Apollo.