FACTS ABOUT HESS

Southland Times, Issue 24438, 19 May 1941, Page 7

FACTS ABOUT HESS

HOME SECRETARY SPEAKS OUT MURDER OF COMRADES (8.0.W.) RUGBY, May 17. The. Home Secretary, Mr Herbert Morrison, speaking at Hackney, said: —•

“We can at least be grateful to Hess for providing the British people with a good deal of entertainment in the midst of these grim times. He has been the hero or .villain of the piece in a real life melodrama that would have won rounds of applause from the Drury Lane gallery in the old days. “I have no Hess guess. Instead I will give a few hard facts. Hess, Hitler’s right-hand man, is, like the rest of them, a brutal thug whose hands, like his master’s, are stained with some of the worst political crimes of modern times. Hess takes his share of guilt for the murder of hundreds of his comrades in 1934. So highly did Hitler think of his, peculiar capacities that he made it his task to out-Gestapo the Gestapo. “This gangster is now in our hands and he is going to stay in our hands. It does not matter what kind of animal he is, whether he is Rat No. 1 or the Trojan horse or whether he is just over here in the vain hope of finding innocents to play with. The main thing is that he is caged. There is just one more fact to add to this. Whatever his reason for coming here, the German people, to put it mildly, are very much shaken by the whole episode. They chose between two or three different explanations, all of them equally unpalatable. Meanwhile, we have seen the edifying sight of Goebbels spending the last” few days revolving rapidly on his axis—chasing his own tail.” Sil’ Nevile Henderson, who was British Ambassador in Berlin for two years before the outbreak of the war, has given his opinion concerning the flight of Rudolf Hess. He says that he would describe Hess in the days when he knew him as a fanatical adherent of National Socialism. He might then have been best described as the adopted son of the Fuhrer, to whom he was devoted and who was devoted to him. NAZISM ON WRONG TRACK “Hess has become convinced in the last two years that Nazism is on the wrong track and is being used to serve the private ends of thorough-going scoundrels such as Himmler, Ribbentrop, Ley and the party bosses in general who are acting solely for themselves,” said Sir Nevile. “Hess was an absolutely fanatical supporter of the Nazi system. He is honest and sincere. But, because of the impression his flight has created in Germany, it is impossible that he came to Britain on a secret mission. I knew Hess very well when I was jn Germany and I regarded him as Hitler’s adopted son. Both were equally devoted to each other. Hess’s flight has accelerated Germany’s war effort. They will try to force the issue before the winter.” The fact that it was revealed today that the letter from Hess, which the Duke of Hamilton immediately handed to the authorities, contained a suggestion for a meeting on neutral territory to discuss peace, certainly lends colour to the latest Nazi picture of Hess as a Messianic idealist. But it. is no reflection, whatever, on the sanity of the man, who may have thought a negotiated peace the only possible hope for Germany in the dangerous situation to which her war adventure is leading her. The picture of Hess as an idealist, the latest figment of the overworked imagination of the German propagandists, hardly squares with the truth as stated by The Daily Telegraph as follows: “Hess, more than any other man, except Hitler, is responsible for the abominati<?,ns of the concentration camps and the Gestapo. He lived and throve and made himself important by murder, torture, and persecution. Such is the Hess religion.” The Daily Telegraph adds this timely warning: “Though one of the chief Nazi gangsters has deserted, that does not diminish one jot the urgency of the development of our utmost fighting power now. We must not be deflected or deterred from the toll and sacrifice of our task by the fantastic melodrama of Hess.” The British United Press correspondent says that reports are current that Professor Karl Haushofer, leading exponent of the lebensraum (living room) theory has been arrested. German officials neither confirm nor deny the report but state that it would not be surprising if the whole firm (meaning apparently Hess and his associates) were rounded up. Hess, who was Professor Haushofer’s favourite pupil, was the means of bringing Hitler and Haushofer together. Dismissing the Hess affair as settled so far as Germany is concerned, the Berlin radio said that everybody was again turning their attention to the military campaign. The Fuhrer after his numerous warnings will break the British rulers with their mad ideas.