WHAT TIMARU IS READING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21244, 14 January 1939, Page 8

WHAT TIMARU IS READING

GUNS BEFORE BUTTER REVELATION OF NAZI IDEAS (Specially written for ‘‘The Tima.ru Herald" by A. K. Elliot) Bruce Lockhart can always be relied on for something unusual, and the title of his new book, such as “Guns or Blitter” is certainly arresting. The sub-title is “War Countries and Peace Countries of Europe Revisited.” A quotation from Field Marshal Goering gives the title—" Guns will make us powerful, butter will only make us fat.” With the exception of three years in Malaya, most of Bruce Lockhart’s life has been spent in Central and Eastern Europe, mostly in consular and diplomatic service. Later he took up banking, then journalism but the caged feeling became overwhelming and at last in 1937, he becomes free of Fleet Street —he hopes for ever—free to live his dream, to realise all his hopes, to get away from London and return to the Europe he so loved. But it was a Europe different from his old time Europe. He meets his old friends. Dr. Benes, the kings of the minority States, the diplomats and the money business men, and among them all is that sense of strain—Nazis, anti-Nazis, Austrians and Czechs—he meets them all. In a most interesting chapter on the Austrian crisis, he says that he has had more than his share of luck in revolutions, has been eyewitness of many tumults and has never differed any real inconvenience. He experienced the same good fortune in Vienna, but he contrasts the Austria of many years ago with Nazi Austria and he describes the ruthless purging that took place. He comments on the fact that Vienna is not Austria but an international city With more mixed races than any other capital in the world—German, Slovene, Czech, Hungarian, Croat, Rumanian and Jew—these are only a few. All these Viennese nationalities were to be Germanised with the usual ruthless German efficiency. His last chapter takes the form of an attempt to crystallise his impressions gained through ten yearq, of following the development of the Nazi movement. He has striven to free his book from prejudice and the barometer of his emotions sways between a deep depression and a cautious optimism. An American Setting In “Thrice a Stranger” Vera Brittain opens her new book by saying that so many books have been written by British authors against an American background, that nowadays it seems necessary to justify a new one. Her American publishers doubted if, having spent only two years in America, she could possibly describe their country in a book. However, as America has always played an Intimate part in her personal life. Miss Brittain feels quite justified in submitting still yet another book on the United States. The author also explains the title of the book thus —"The title I have chosen is not intended to suggest any lack of welcoming generosity on the part of the American people, for no nation could be more benevolently anxious to make a foreigner feel at home. The only time when their reception of me fails to command my envious admiration is the few moments during which I am herded with the "aliens” for passport inspection as the steamer moves slowly up the Hudson towards the Docks. The word "alien” seems always to carry with it theiadjective “undesirable,” and I cannot acknowledge without inward resentment that description of myself when I am coming to a country which shares a thousand years and more of the same history, speaks a language approximately if not exactly the same, and follows some—though now not many of the same habits and customs.” Her criticisms of the United States are very sharp in many instances, but such criticism is written in all candour and in her concluding chapter she confesses—“ Thirteen years ago. America appeared to me in the. guise of an antagonist. Nine years later she became my friend; to-day she represents the beloved refuge to which I would gladly entrust the lives that I hold most dear. From the forward direction of her aspiring, invincible spirit, freed from the Impulse of death that leads cultures to compass their own destruction, arises one sure and certain hope that for those whom she shelters, tne dawn of to-morrow will break.” Sidelights on the Nazis "What Hitler Did To Us” by Eva Lips is the arresting title of a book by Eva I ip < the wife of a professor in Cologne. Einstein, already an exile, has a letter on the book and in it he says, “Whoever would see the true face of Hitler’s Germany must read this book. It deals with the fate of a non-Jewish, cultured husband and wife, with the struggle which grew entirely out of the upright character of these two admirable people. It is an account from the pen of a trained anthropologist, presenting a clear picture of facts. Whoever reads this book will see clearly what Fascism means!” Professor Lips and his wife were tn no way active in politics; they were devoted to the exploration of facts in an effort to find truth, and so we find that the professor in the course of the Hitler regime lost his job, his beautiful home, his friends and his country, not because he was a Jew, not because he was a Catholic, simply because he refused to turn his knowledge, hts institution into a propaganda organization. Mrs Lips describes their home—for eight years—they furnished the little home bit by bit determined that everything should be beautiful. "We had transformed the grounds from a bleak, stone-cluttered vacant lot into a flourishing garden, digging up the rocks one by one, turning up the soil, feeding it generously with humus and nitrates and coaxing it back to life. We were rewarded with a smooth lawn, fruitbearing trees and masses of gay flowers. Our greatest success was the round rose-bed at the foot of the terrace steps. Along the bare wall in the rear that separated us from the neighbouring gardens, we had planted a stretch of rambler roses, and fronting it, an arbour of golden-chain, Japanese quince, lilac, laburnam and jasmine.” On the 30th January, 1933, was witnessed “the birth hour of the Third Reich” and so opened an era in German History which was to cost the Professor and his wife, their little house, their museum and the Fatherland. The tragedy of the Jews is there; the tragedy of the banned authors and artists; the burning of the books with libraries; the seizure of their own books; all the pitiful tragedies that have been enacted during the Nazi Regime.