1940-06-28 — Page 17

THE CHINA MAIL, JUNE 28, 1940

The Hitler's

Myths Of History

the

Bo-

war

-By- J.L. Hammond

re-

can

CHARITY CONCERT

A variety concert by Chinese Civil Servants will take place at the Ko Shing Theatre on Monday evening at 8.30 p.m.

consists of the famous Chinese histori- A greater part of the programme

cal play "The Heroic Death of a Song-

songs, harmonica and stress." Other items will include Chinese music between acts.

The popularity of the play has been proved by the long run it had when staged in Shanghai recently. Last week a dress rehearsal took place in King's College and many prominent general feeling that the standard of the specially invited. The

acting was very high. It is not the taken to the stage for on many oc- first time that the civil servants have

casions they have put on plays in Cantonese and Mandarin for their own amusement,

but we shall begin with Europe. The Holy Roman Empire, of which from the time of the crowning of Otto the Hitler's proclamation to his troops sea was the Atlantic, and all the ad- always the King of Germany, stretched Great, in A.D. 936, the Emperor was began with these sentences: "The vantges. hour has come for the decisive battle formerly enjoyed

in the days of Charlemagne, whose by Venice for the future of the German nation. Genoa now passed to the peoples who most of Europe. That great expanse and insignia I brought to Nuremberg, over For 300 years the rulers of England looked out on that sea, and France have made it their aim to

is our Lebensraum. The Such was the state of things when Treaty of Westphalia formally declar-. infamous prevent any real consolidation of a crushing blow fell on Germany.ed the independence of the Europe and, above all, to keep Ger- The Thirty Years' War, one

United of many weak and helpless."

the Provinces of Holland and the This pic consequences of the Reformation, be- Confederation. To-day we will

Swiss ture of an Anglo-French conspiracy gan with a religious revolt in may seen an odd reading of history hemia, and

conquer Holland, To-morrow? it spread over Europe. to those who remember

Two reflections must strike every-critics were that when Germany was its chief victim. Fisher body about this claim. In what sort they tried to consolidate Europe Louis put it that by the end of the XIV and. Napoleon

of world does a man live who were stubbornly Germany, once so civilised, had sunk spread death and destruction over a resisted by England and that never in social manners to Muscovite bar-continent, devoting everything science until 1914 had Britain fought against barity. The war began in 1618, and has discovered to wholesale massacre, Germany on the side of France. Is it seemed likely to end in 1834, but to avenge wrongs inflicted three cen- it a German grievance that, as a great Richelieu, the French Bismarck, used turies ago? German historian, Wilhelm Dibelius. and prolonged it to further his chief fate of Europe if he wins?

And what will be the put it, "the result of British policy was purpose of reducing the complete destruction

Habsburg says that at the beginning of the six-cidedly difficult play and are giving the This time they have chosen a de- of French House, This is the plans for world supremacy?”,

grievance that teenth century Germany stood in the entire proceeds to the B.W.O.F. and rankles in the Nazi mind. It is a But Hitler's mind

forefront of civilisation. To-day she is haunted by frequent topic in Nazi papers history a good deal older

and stands in the sight of the world "out-

B.F.R.D.C. than the propaganda. Hitler's reference to 300 law'd from the noble temper of man." history of the wars of Marlborough years is an allusion to the Peace of and Wellington. To understand him Westphalia that was signed in 1648 at we must recall the speech he made the end of that ruinous at Nuremberg in September, 1938. that was specially devastating because "The Holy Roman Empire begins to Germans fought each breathe again

other with all I had the insignia the passions of religion and all the of the old Reich brought to Nuremberg tenacity of faction. in order to induce not only my own nation but also the whole world to consider that more than a thousand years before the discovery of a new world a mighty Germanic Reich exist ed.....

The Germanic Reich has slumbered for a long time, the Ger- inan people have now awakened and taken the thousand-year-old to themselves."

What is the meaning of this reference to the discovery of the new world?

Two Great Powers

crown

Professor Toynbee has well said that in the Middle Ages the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire were the only two Great Powers. They were the institutions in which the spirit of the Middle Ages, its desire for peace and unity, found shelter and symbols. They exerted a force on the whole of Christendom. If we turn from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the nineteenth century we find that in the New World, to the discovery of which by Columbus and his successors Hitler refers in this speech, several European Powers had empires. They were Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and Great Britain. Two peoples are absent from this list. They are the two peo- ples who had shared the chief glory of the Middle Ages. Germany, the home of the Empire, and Italy, the home of the Papacy, had no possession in this New World. The reason was partly that it was much easier for Eng- land, France, and Spain to consolidate their strength in the new national unit which had superseded the old unit of the City State. Louis XI in France, the Tudors in England, Fer- dinand and Isabelia in Spain had started the process of making national kingdoms; the process that Machiavelli saw to be essential if a State wished for power in the world created by the Renaissance. Germany was a series of States grouped round a head who represented a great tradition and en- joyed a moral prestige in Europe. Italy was a series of States containing in their fold the home of a spiritual power exercising a unique authority in the world. Thus they suffered as nations for their splendour as symbols. Germany was politically weak, aggregate, as Bryce described her, "of very small States, governed by princes who could neither remain at peace with each other nor combine against a foreign enemy, under the nominal presidency of an emperor who had little lawful authority and could not exert what he had."

Crushing Blow

an

There was another reason for Ger- many's inertia in the great colonising age. In the Middle Ages commerce was chiefly engaged in bringing silks and spices from Asia to Italy to be sent thence to the market towns of Flanders and Germany. After the

fifteenth century the all-important

war, a war

Nazi Obsession

Fisher

FINANCING CANADIAN

FACTORIES

Ottawa, To-day. The British Supply Board has as- sumed the capital cost of factory con- struction on behalf of 35 Canadian companies, according to the Canadian Department of Munitions Supply.

It is hard for Englishmen, for whom there is little life in the ashes of his- tory, to understand this Nazi obsession. The Board has made commitments Unhappily Hitler feeds his wild me- galomania with this fire.

of well over £12,500,000. These ex- What says in effect

he penditures, will, it is estimated, pro- to the world is this: duce war materials of a value Other nations gained their empires in ceeding £62,500,000 annually. the distant seas, east and west, when In addition to financing factories, we were disunited. To-day it is our the Board has placed orders for а turn. There is no limit to our dreams, 'year's supply of their output.-Reuter,

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It is therefore hoped that members of the public will not miss seeing something really worth-while and at the same time support a very excellent cause. The Acting Governor, The Hon. Mr. Smith, who is patron of the performance, and Mrs. Smith will be present.

Booking is open at Tsang Fook Piano Co.

U.S. LAYS DOWN 45,000-TON WARSHIP

Brooklyn, To-day. The United States first 45,000-ton super-dreadnought Iowa was laid down here yesterday. The ceremony was secret.-Reuter.

THE CHINA PRINTING & FINISHING CO., LTD. (Incorporated under the Hongkong Ordinances) SHANGHAI

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