GERMANY’S VICTIMS

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21244, 15 October 1940, Page 4

GERMANY’S VICTIMS

Norway’s struggle to maintain her national characteristics while Germany imposes an iron rule is typical of the tragedy of the many countries which have fallen victims to the Nazi aggression. Norwegians are being arrested every day for doing those ordinary human things which they have been taught to do in many long years of peaceful progress. If they take pity on and trade with a Jew who is being starved out of existence they offend against the new laws and are punished. If they naturally shrink from association and trade with Quisling supporters whom their conscience tells them should be shunned, again they offend against the Nazi law. Newspapers are being suspended and their staffs arrested for daring to" criticise Quisling, the Nazi gauleiter. All over the country the mailed fist is descending upon people who for generations have proved their superiority in the arts of civilisation to their new masters. The thing is so startlingly fantastic as to seem almost unreal in this 20th century, but there it is, and similar conditions prevail throughout a great part of Europe. The insane militaristic and bombastic code of the Nazis is spreading like a disease—a thing that is feared and loathed by millions of people who yet have it thrust upon them by armed force. Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, Poles, Frenchmen and other millions are simmering in now impotent protest which one day will be impotent no longer. The question is often asked why these millions of people do not rise and throw off the Nazi yoke. The answer is that he who holds the mechanised armed strength today holds the power of life and death. Unarmed millions are all but powerless against modern armed force. The day when the people who are now prostrate could most effectively have combined to keep out the Nazi invader was in the years that are past. In that fact lies the great lesson for the future. There must be means of mutual protection against an evil power such as that represented by Nazi Germany. In the meantime those people who lie under the German heel can do little more than cling to their faith, assist their friends wherever possible and await the day when the might of Germany is over-shadowed by the might of the freedomloving peoples. When the tide is turned they will rise—it is hoped with their faith in the truth undimmed by the brutality of the Nazi regime.