BOOKS AND WRITERS

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21156, 4 July 1940, Page 5

BOOKS AND WRITERS

GERMAN WOMEN LIKE RUDDERLESS SHIPS UNDER SPELL OF HITLER Deceit and depravity precede decay. With the first-named weapon, Hitler and Stalin enslaved their fellow-nationals. They each cajoled and cheated the several parties and I organisations which they had to use j to attain their objective—dictator- i ship. Mr F. Borkenau, writer of “The Totalitarian Enemy,” has written several most illuminating books about communism in its protean forms, and sets out to reveal “What is the war about?” and “Who is the real enemy?”—both of which ques-

COMMENTS AND EXTRACTS

tions he answers in convincing style. Nazism, Bolshevism, were inevitable, and are blood brothers, so that there was nothing extraordinary in their alliance against the democracies. Our author, too, knows his Germany. “It is a country led by a group of crazy adventurers, ruling over a people dazed with hysterical fear. She is a country capable of any sort of horror but incapable of sustained effort. “The Nazi revolution was a reaction to disasters which preceded it, and which had, somehow, to be overcome. But the tragedy of Germany, l of Europe, and of the world, was ; that Germany was too deeply diseased to react against these disasters in a decent way.” Breaks New Ground Of the mentality of men under the spell of Hitler, many men have written, but Mr Borkenau breaks almost new ground when he discusses the German frau. Seventy per cent of her sex are robots in armament factories or beasts of burden in the fields. Her home life has been disrupted. Her men have been “chain-ganged ’ into the army. Her domestic activities are entirely controlled by ration cards, and she has been sharply torn from her religion and turned into a pagan. She is, in short, a rudderless ship in a tremendous tempest. RIVER PANORAMA EYES ON THE DANUBE CONNECTION WITH HISTORY In this world at war the Danube has become the most important of all rivers, so “The Danube,” by Emil Lengyell, is of particular interest. From its source in the Black Forest to its delta in the Black Sea, the River Danube flows not only through the heart of Europe but through 2000 years of the world’s most fateful history. The people in its basin— South German, Austrian, Czech, Hungarian, a multitude of Slavs, Bulgarian and Rumanian —are now, as they have been since the beginning of the Christian era, a storm centre of cultures in conflict. Emil Lengyel’s story resounds with the clash of great Powers and personalities, the struggle between East and West, North and South. From the rich accumulation during two millenia, he has drawn upon the legends, the folk lore, the religions, the political, social and economic history to capture the life-giving and deathdealing drama of the river. The key cities emerge in vivid pictures: Vienna, as old as the Roman Empire; Budapest, the fastest growing capital in Europe; Bucharest, an oriental Paris. His book deals with the critical present as completely as it does with the rich past, and is prophetic of the future role of this cockpit of Europe in the fate of our civilisation. “The Danube” is more than the biography of a river; it is the whole panorama of the Continent from the time the first fisherman’s net was | thrown into the Danube’s waters un- • til the latest giant Nazi German bomber cast its ominous shadow over the river’s banks. GAMELIN’S MEMOIRS RELIEVED OF COMMAND VERY SELDOM SEEN ! Since General Gamelin was disgraced, discussion of his activities i has been strongly discouraged both ; in Britain and France, but the Lonj don Daily Telegraph’s columnist j helps to satisfy some of the curiosity j aroused since General Weygand took . over. He says that when Gamelin was i relieved of his command after the French defeat at Sedan, he retired to a little flat overlooking the Seine, where he continued writing his memoirs, using a small portable typewriter. He went out rarely and was seldom seen by his former associates. Before the German entry into Paris he departed for a small country property.