The Charlotte News

Monday, August 28, 1939

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: Re "Hitler's Reply", again, this very clear and very accurate prediction: "Germany may lose the war. And if she does--it is a pity that Mr. Hitler apparently does not understand the cold anger with which the Western world confronts him. For it is as certain as anything can be that if Germany loses the war, she and not Poland, will be partitioned."

Below is the letter from Daladier and the Fuhrer's reply, even more bizarre than evident at the time, as witness: "Some time ago I gave a public assurance to the French people that the return of the Saar territory was the preliminary condition of such an appeasement. As soon as this return had been effected I solemnly confirmed my renunciation of any other claim that might affect France."

Ah, but it was all in self-defense, said he.

In large, it is sort of like this in little: Someone has a legal right to their own property. Someone else, call this person Lordy B. Ah, decides they want that property, or more to the point, not the land and its appurtenances, but what that land and its appurtenances, once traded or sold off, can afford them in increase of their own home, deemed insufficient to their plainly superior status over the inhabitants of that property next door.

So Lordy Ah, makes up a convenient rationalization to get that property of another: that person isn't a good person, after all, not moral and upstanding like Lordy B.; why, hear tell, that good for nothing doesn't even work; no, they're bad, dirty, vermin infested; don't even mind their yard, only mow it once every couple of weeks, if then. Besides, that property blocks Lordy B's view of the property on the other side, cuts off what should be Lordy's road to the property on the other side, too.

And, what's more, dang it, that house on the property is inhabited by people in part who are being mistreated--have reports of it--and they are part of the circle of friends of Lordy; no it is not true that those people are persecuting the rightful owner to make the case for Lordy, absolutely not. That would be the rightful owner's delusive complex and paranoia--for the rightful owner is not that. Lordy owns, or soon will, that property--in truth, belonged to Lordy all along. That Lordy B. Ah is merely correcting an ancient theft of that property by those thieving poltroonish, non-mowing, less-than-human rotten vermin who wrongfully claim ownership because of some paper they call a legal document, some title and charter to the land, they claim by a treaty. Huh, dictat is what that is. Lordy need not be governed by such nonsense as that. Lordy can't even read that. Too long and complex. So Lordy will simply move in and take it, lord over the occupant, tear up that prolix legal paper because that is of no account now, in truth never was anyhow. Lordy is the Law, now.

Of course, Lordy must employ the help of a friend, Tarnhelm, to do the deed properly, in order to ward off all the friends of the rightful owner who have respected the rightful owner for many, many decades. Tarnhelm will work to tarnish the image now of the rightful owner, soften him up, make him easier to displace. That's the ticket.

Then it's all hail and smooth sail for Lordy B. Ah--who will soon own the world in fact.

Because Lordy B. is lord and master, god incarnate, in fact--that is until Lordy proved quite human--when he shot himself in the head after giving his new wife a cyanide capsule to chew, as his former friend with the Tarnhelm came a-calling one evening.

******

M. GEORGES BONNET, Minister for Foreign Affairs,
to M. COULONDRE, French Ambassador in Berlin.

Paris, August 26, 1939. 2.50 p.m.

Your Excellency,

The French Ambassador in Berlin has sent me your personal message.

Faced as we are, as you remind me, with the gravest responsibility that can ever be assumed by two heads of government, that of allowing the blood of two great peoples to be shed, when they desire nothing but peace and work, I owe it to you, I owe it to our two peoples to say that the fate of peace still rests solely in your hands.

You cannot doubt my sentiments towards Germany, nor France's pacific dispositions towards your nation. No Frenchman has ever done more than I have to strengthen between our two peoples not merely peace, but a sincere cooperation in their own interest as well as in that of Europe and the whole world.

Unless you attribute to the French people a conception of national honour less high than that which I myself recognize in the German people, you cannot doubt either that France will be true to her solemn promises to other nations, such as Poland, which, I am perfectly sure, wants also to live in peace with Germany.

These two facts are easily reconciled. There is nothing today which need prevent any longer the pacific solution of the international crisis with honour and dignity for all peoples, if the will for peace exists equally on all sides.

I can vouch not only for the good will of France, but also for that of all her allies. I can personally guarantee the readiness which Poland has always shown to have recourse to methods of free conciliation, such as may be envisaged between the Governments of two sovereign nations. In all sincerity I can assure you that there is not one of the grievances invoked by Germany against Poland in connection with the Danzig question which might not be submitted to decision by such methods with a view to a friendly and equitable settlement.

I can also pledge my honour that there is nothing in the clear and sincere solidarity of France with Poland and her allies which could modify in any manner whatsoever the peaceful inclinations of my country. This solidarity has never prevented us, and does not prevent us today, from helping to maintain Poland in her pacific inclinations.

In so serious an hour I sincerely believe that no man endowed with human feelings could understand that a war of destruction should be allowed to break out without a last attempt at a pacific adjustment between Germany and Poland. Your will for peace may be exercised in all confidence in this direction without the slightest derogation from your sense of German honour. As for myself, the head of the Government of France, a country which, like yours, only desires harmony between the French people and the German people, and which, on the other hand, is united to Poland by bonds of friendship and by the pledged word, I am ready to make all the efforts that an honest man can make in order to ensure the success of this attempt.

Like myself, you were a soldier in the last war. You realize, as I do, how a people's memory retains a horror for war and its disasters, whatever may be its result. My conception of your eminent rise as leader of the German people, to guide them along the paths of peace towards the full accomplishment of their mission in the common work of civilization, prompts me to ask you for a reply to this proposal. If the blood of France and that of Germany flow again, as they did twenty-five years ago, each of the two peoples will fight with confidence in its own victory, but the most certain victors will be the forces of destruction and barbarism.

******
Berlin, August 27, 1939.

Personal

To His Excellency, M. DALADIER, President of the Council of Ministers of France, at Paris.

MY DEAR PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL,

I can understand the thoughts that you have expressed. Nor have I, for my part, ever minimized the high duties devolving on those on whom the fate of peoples rests. As an ax-Serviceman I am as aware as you are of the frightfulness of war. Owing to this outlook and to this experience, I have likewise made sincere efforts to eliminate all cause of conflict between our two peoples. Some time ago I gave a public assurance to the French people that the return of the Saar territory was the preliminary condition of such an appeasement. As soon as this return had been effected I solemnly confirmed my renunciation of any other claim that might affect France.

The German people has approved my attitude.

******

Art, poetry--circuses, zoos--history, humanity--stranger than fiction.

Or so they say.

Some Will Be Shot, Some Gassed, And Some Led Away

Perhaps no more disheartening commentary on mankind has come out of this jostling truculence in Europe than the story about the London Zoo. About, that is, the inmates of the ancient Zoological Gardens at Regent's Park.

Some of the animals, including an okapi (foreshortened giraffe), two gorillas, a Grevy's zebra (worth $2,500) and a couple of Giant Pandas, the rarer and dearer specimens, that is, are already being evacuated to safer quarters along with Canterbury's stained-glass windows and other priceless art treasures. But the ordinary animals and reptiles must take their chances of a bombardment along with ordinary windows and family portraits--and ordinary humanity.

The wild carnivorous animals will be shot the moment the ARP sirens sound, and the reptiles will be gassed, since there is no remote possibility of slipping them into Hitler's bedchamber. And all the inoffensive gnus and harte-beests and the gentle little Tommies (Thompson's gazelles) and even the philosophical ruminants will be left exposed, along with London's remaining population, to the searing rain from the sky.

Once upon a time, according to Plutarch, "both Empedocles and Heraclitus held it for a truth that man could not be altogether cleared from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does." Not to mention his inhumanity to man.

Both Lord Hitler and Musso Eagerly Desire It

From the Berlin dispatches of Louis P. Lochner, Associated Press ace, we cull the following:

"Don't think for one moment that Hitler wants war," one spokesman said.

"Nobody would be happier than our Fuhrer if the Poles accepted our conditions without bloodshed!"

And from the Rome dispatches, these gems:

"The press increased its urgent appeal to England and France to avert war, attributing to them the entire responsibility for the crisis. Il Messaggero repeated the view of Premier Mussolini that there is no question in Europe which cannot be settled peacefully."

"England Is Not in Peril, nor France, nor Poland," Il Messaggero argued.

"We want still to refuse to believe that extreme consequences may arise. Not only in our hearts and minds, but more and above all in our capacity as Italians to reason coolly, we find motives for not believing in the complete aberration of those who have in this moment the responsibility of power in England and France."

Obviously, they are right--all of 'em. Obviously, Mr. Hitler doesn't want war. Obviously, all questions in Europe can be settled peacefully. All that is necessary, you see, is just to let Lords Hitler and Mussolini have all their way at all times. And not to see that and act on it--of course, you see that is "aberration," don't you? As silly as the notion that two and two make four or that black is not white?

Mr. Borah's Judgment Of The Future Comes A Cropper

It is a little puzzling as to why, if the President wanted to make a strong gesture for peace, he didn't call Congress into session immediately upon his return to Washington. Nothing that could be done would be better calculated to impress Adolf Hitler than the rapid repeal of the present neutrality act, perhaps to be replaced by the Hull-Pittman Bill, perhaps, even better, not to be replaced by any bill at all but simply to leave matters on the basis of international law.

However, it may be that the President had reason. The partisanship in spite of some of the so-called "isolationists" (most of whom had never been such before) in the last session was so rabid that one may not be sure that they would not now put these things above the peace of the world and our own national interest. And certainly, the old genuine isolationists, like Borah and Hi Johnson, would have come up roaring.

But as for Borah, it ought to have been easy to overwhelm him, for he has turned out to be the worst prophet ever heard of. At the White House conference just before the defeat of the Hull-Pittman Bill, he made bold to tell Mr. Hull and the President that he put no stock in their statements that, on the basis of their secret information they believed a war crisis to be imminent, that he himself had sources of information in Europe which he thought better than theirs and that he would take full responsibility for the assertion that no important crisis would develop inside a year! That was less than a month ago--and look what Bill's sources of information and his judgment have come to.

The Logic Of This Paper Is Wholly Upside Down

Hitler's letter of yesterday to Daladier is perhaps the weirdest document to come out of modern diplomacy.

It brazenly asserts again the old cry of "the right of self-determination" for the Germans in Danzig--asks Mr. Daladier what he would do if it were Marseilles. The comparison, of course, is nonsense. Indeed, it turns back against Hitler's own argument. Marseilles is the great southern doorway of France, and so essential to her existence. Danzig is the great northern doorway of Poland, and even more essential to her existence than Marseilles is to France.

As for that right of self-determination, Mr. Hitler has deprived himself of the right to enter that plea by grabbing off the Czechs. And in fact deprives himself of it in the same breath in which he makes it by demanding not only Danzig but the Polish Corridor, which happens to be inhabited mainly by Poles.

Rather, he deprives himself of it under the logic of the civilized world. But not under his own barbaric logic of Blut und Boden. This claim is ultimately a blatant assertion that Germans, being the superior breed of humanity under the Aryan myth, are entitled to different treatment from that handed to Czechs and Poles and other "lesser breeds without the Law," including Americans.

But unfortunately for Mr. Hitler and his gang, they can't make the world outside Germany accept that view of the matter--not yet, anyhow. When Mr. Hitler restores the Czechs their right of self-determination, when he ceases to demand the right to tyrannize over Poles, then, under the civilized view, he may be able to assert some reasonable claim to Danzig, but not before.

So also with the great man's yapping about the "atrocities" visited upon the Germans in Poland and the "Macedonian" condition of the frontier. So far as there is any "Macedonian condition," it is of course his own handiwork--the result of deliberately planted trouble-makers' activities. Most of it is a lie. It may be true that some Germans are getting pretty rough treatment in the land, but any people which attempted to aid in destroying a nation in which they live would get rough treatment anywhere. These Germans may be thankful that they are in Poland and not the United States, else they'd adorn lamp posts in short order.

And so again with Mr. Hitler's "historical" argument. It is his thesis that Germany is entitled to tyrannize over Poles because in the eighteenth century the Prussian ruler, together with the Austrians and Russians, committed the crime of partitioning Poland. That is to say, the fact that Dick Turpin once upon a time successfully held up and robbed John Jones of his wallet gives Mr. Turpin a legal title to all the wallets Mr. Jones will ever have! And in a world which refuses to accept his view that Germany has a right to play both ends against the middle, Mr. Hitler proves too much. Under the logic of his claim here, France is entitled to most of Germany--because Napoleon once held it.

Finally, to round out this fantastic document Mr. Hitler again turns God. In any case, he advises Daladier cynically, Poland will bear the brunt of the war, and he'll see to it that she is destroyed and disappears. It may be true that Poland will disappear. She will if Germany wins the war. But there is another possibility. Germany may lose the war. And if she does--it is a pity that Mr. Hitler apparently does not understand the cold anger with which the Western world confronts him. For it is as certain as anything can be that if Germany loses the war, she and not Poland, will be partitioned.