Best Mouths

On May 21, 1935 in one of his most deeply moving peace overtures to France, Orator Adolf Hitler cried: "The German Government sees in the respecting of the demilitarized [Rhineland] zone a contribution to the pacification of Europe!"

Deeply moving too were Orator Hitler's words last week, he having in the meantime ruptured the treaty in question and remilitarized the Rhineland (TIME, March 16). "Natural rights stand above the paragraphs of treaties," the Realmleader told an election throng of 20,000 at Frankfurt-am-Main. "I ask the German people, 'Art Thou, Oh German people, in favor of burying the hatchet with France?' and they reply 'Yes.' And I ask, 'Dost Thou, Oh German people, desire that we should attempt to lord it over or suppress France?' and they answer 'No.' And I am sure that the majority of the French people feel the same way about the German people!"

From this it was a natural transition for Adolf Hitler to picture himself and Germany as the parties injured by French, British, Italian and Belgian statesmen in finding Germany guilty at London last week of treaty violation. In these electioneering efforts der Fuehrer was assisted by Nazi censors who dealt with incoming dispatches from London in such fashion that from reading German newsorgans one would have supposed that the British people, most British statesmen and many French people considered Germany wholly guiltless and the victim of a few French statesmen of the most hate-poisoned stamp. Actually the guilt of Germany was voted by eleven nations of the League Council without a single dissenting voice (see p. 25).

"With what right do others accuse us of a breach of treaty?" was General Hermann Wilhelm Goering's contribution to Nazi electioneering at Dortmund. "The world cannot condemn us. We Germans alone have the right to judge our own actions! By its ballots the German people will deliver judgment on March 29."

At Koenigsberg one of his weepy moods overtook Orator Hitler. "Do you think this struggle has been easy for me?" he pathetically asked the throng. "It is consuming my nerves and my strength. I am not growing any younger. I realize that things which I once could do easily are painfully hard for me today."

The Propaganda Ministry confiscated an edition of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung in which weepy quotes from the Realmleader appeared and he was his belligerent self before 40,000 at Hamburg. "There are statesmen," he roared, "who . . . would introduce a new defamation of the German nation! If they could look ahead through the next decade they would be frightened!"

This threat Adolf Hitler discarded before reaching Breslau where he was inspired to announce: "No word has been said by us, no move undertaken in the past three years, through which anyone could feel threatened." In referring to the day on which he became Realmleader, Hitler cried: "Every honest German was ashamed at the time of my accession that at that time a certain international race [Jews] could openly propagate treason! I put a stop to that!"

Thus the beauty of Orator Hitler's daily and twice-daily speeches to German voters last week was that he said almost everything backwards as well as forwards in alternate moods similar to Wagnerian music and having a similar appeal to the German soul. Intellectual tests of consistency the cheering throngs did not apply; they simply revelled. The Great Orator filled them fuller & fuller to bursting with his simple themes: GERMANY, BLOOD & SOIL, HONOR!

From Vatican City the official newsorgan of His Holiness Pope Pius XI recently warned the faithful in obvious reference to Adolf Hitler that the intoxicating word HONOR is now being distorted out of all meaning by "demagogues." All Nazi best mouths made it ring throughout Germany last week. Their main point, hammered home thousands of times, was that the Fatherland is menaced by cruel foes who want to deprive Germans of their "honor . . . our precious honor . . . honor, the dearest thing to every German . . . GERMAN HONOR . . . German Honor . . . German honor. . . ."

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