Tuesday, October 17, 1939

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "Racial strength is vital, --politics a luxury." Hitler? No. Our aerodronamic hero, Charles Lindbergh, October, 1939.

A Statesman Plumps For A Definition By Hitler

Yesterday the Hon. Bennett Champ Clark, of Missouri, told the Senate among other things, that,

That, if you don't happen to know, is the line laid down by Hitler in his speech in Berlin, and which is being assiduously peddled in this country by the Coughlin-Kuhn-Browder combination.

It makes so little sense that it should go unanswered, if it did not tend to confuse a great many people, and especially when it comes from a United States Senator.

The facts in the case are perfectly clear. Germany launched an unprovoked war of conquest on Poland in the face of warnings from Britain and France that they meant to stand by their pledges to Poland. They stood by those pledges, announcing at the same time that they meant to fight the war, not only until Poland was restored but until Europe was released from the everlasting uproars kicked up by Hitlerism. Adolf conquered Poland in a month. Then offered "peace" on his own terms, which included as the primary condition the recognition of his conquest of Poland. The Allies refused, on the basis that such a "peace" would be equivalent to surrender, and that the Hitler record made it clear that all he wanted was a breathing space in which to get ready for new and greater demands.

To say that that makes the Allies the aggressors is to say that Adolf Hitler has a perfect right to make war when he pleases and to demand that it end when he pleases. It is to say that when three companions are walking along a road and a highwayman attacks and kills one of them, and afterwards, observing that the two others have by now drawn their pistols, offers to let them go on down the road a hundred yards or so before, having made sure they have put their pistols up again, he shoots them in the back--provided they will give him a few minutes to loot the corpse in peace.

It has long been evident that Clark's heart was with the Nazis. It is unmistakably clear now.

Lindbergh Takes Over The Aryan Myth Completely

Two little noted remarks in the Lindbergh speech last week deserve notice:

That is: (1) the Nazis are no menace to democracy, and (2) it will make no difference to democracy if they win and bring the Nazi regime all over all Europe.

And then:

That is taken straight out of the Nazi book. For "European race" is simply another common name for the "Aryan race" invented by Comte de Gobineau and revived and popularized by Hitler, Rosenberg & Co. in our time. And the last sentence appears over and over again under various guises in "Mein Kampf" itself.

According to every anthropologist of any status in the world, there is no such thing as the European race, any more than there is the European language. There are many races in Europe divided into the Mediterranean, Alpine, and Northern groups, and having nothing in common save that they are lumped together as "white," though many of them are actually darker than the lighter breed among the "yellow" and "black" races.

There is only a European--rather Western--culture, the nature of which was admirably described by Dorothy Thompson in her column Sunday. As she points out, Germany is in full revolt against that culture. And one of the chief doctrines it is using to destroy it is precisely this one of race which Lindbergh repeats and espouses.

The fathers of this republic thought politics (in the large sense in which Lindbergh used it) anything else but a luxury. They thought, indeed, that politics was inevitably involved with the primary conditions for the survival or destruction of civilization. And they never heard the notion that what matters is whether your hair is blond or black, your eyes blue or brown, your nose curved or straight.

Hitler Has Not Settled Down To Mass War Yet

Probably the most important thing to keep in mind about what is going on in Europe now is that Adolf Hitler still much prefers to win by a lightning war of nerves to taking the risks of s systematic military campaign. And it is quite possible that the moves he is making are moves in that game rather than heralds of the beginning of mass warfare.

He has chalked up certain victories, including the sinking of the British battleship, Royal Oak, the inflicting of indeterminate damage on the cruiser, Southampton, and the gaining of a tiny foothold on French soil. But his claims to have sunk or crippled the Repulse, to have crippled not one but two cruisers in the Firth of Forth, rest on no other evidence than the word of his propaganda department, which is known to proceed invariably on the theory that a lie is better than the truth--so that they may safely be considered as belonging merely to the war of words.

But how well the British and French peoples are drilled to withstand this sort of thing we don't know, but it is plain that many Americans immediately take it as meaning disaster for the British and French. Such is far from the case. For instance, if the British have lost one battleship, they have fourteen more with nine building, several of which are due to be launched in early 1940; and the French have seven in commission, with three building. As to the damage done by planes so far, it amounts to little--perhaps nothing. As for the German advance on the Western Front, that was to be expected. It is not probable that the French have expected to hold their gains on German territory. Merely, they have taken them, at little cost, so as to inflict as much loss on the Germans as possible before falling back upon the Maginot Line--if Adolf Hitler's real great drive should come that way, which it probably won't.

Moreover, the course of this war is following the normal course of British wars. Control of the seas inevitably involves losses--always has. And the saying that "England loses all the battles save the last one" is pretty well borne out by history. Twenty-five years ago the British-French cause was in desperate case, and a fifth of France was in German hands.

If the Germans should succeed in repeating the case of the Royal Oak several more times in rapid succession, there might be ground to begin to grow alarmed over the prospect of a rapid Hitler victory. But at present such alarm is based on pure assumption, which runs against all the evident odds.

By This Time In 1914 Germans Were Headed For Paris

In proof of the statement that the last war started out much more disastrously than has this war--always excepting Poland--let's take a look at its chronology.

With a month's earlier opening, by mid-October, 1914, the first World War had seen--

Germany invade France at Cirey (Aug. 2);

Russia invaded Germany (Aug. 2);

Germans eneter Liege (Aug. 7);

Germans under Von Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Hoffman and Francois, defeat Russians under Samsonov at Tannenberg, in East Prussia (Aug. 26-31); Samsonov killed himself; one of the Russian armies fled;

Battle of the Marne (Sept. 6-10,), where a French victory saved Paris in the nick of time.

To be sure, tactics were different last time. Armies sortied to come at each other's throats, meeting on any terrain that seemed to offer a sufficient theater for slaughter. Long columns of troops moved in a dozen different directions, each move necessitating a co-ordinated or a counter-move.

And the best of it, by all odds, lay with Germany, then as now the aggressor, cocked and primed for victory. But in the end unequal to the insatiable demands of a war machine upon her resources.