1941-01-11 — Page 7

THE CHINA MAIL, JANUARY 11, 1941.

CHINA MAIL Axis Threat To The

"WINDSOR HOUSE

THE ITALIAN DEFEAT

When the war began the whole British Empire took up arms to overthrow Hitler and Hitlerism.

Hitler we all know, or think we know a giant in cunning and political depravity with

brain diseased, the

embodiment

World

ing for peace. So did Napoleon, It has taken a long time to rouse the United States, but they are roused at last, for they now seo as something almost imminent a peril which had been derided as remote and imaginary. After

Here

of a ruthless idea. imposed and igencies of war to be abandoned; picced together out of the dis-France Great Britain. After maintained by force, Hitlerism is the epitome of wh 'soever

voluntarily when the fighting jeeta membra of kingdoms in Great Britain the Americas, 18 ceases,"

terrorised collapse. leaving the arrogant and ag- neutral or false, brutish.

indeed is "expanding conquest." We have accepted such the trampled victim wars as the historic gressive in political theory and

Instruments In view of the size, the remote- free once more to pursue his own for the adjustment of nationalness, the wealth, the man power, course, albeit in the shadow of boundaries to correspond with the the sea power and the machine the conqueror's might. No. the nutritions of national strength. power of the United States the violence is to go on. It is not for

Hitlerite Herrenvolk to spare the conquer-

programme naturally seemed fantastic to Americans till ed. They are to continue to stamp

the efficacy of Hitler's recipe for destroying the morale and sapping the strength of the next victim--- namely, treachery and Fifth Column activity - Was sudden-

It is too soon to predict what effect the fall of Bar· dia and the more or less general collapse of Gen- eral Graziani's army will action. have on Italian politics, I do not forget the massive but that it must have re- yielding determination -

virtus--not virtue, but hard, un- which sounding effect through-has enabled Hitlerism, to become out the Moslem world goes by gross, deliberate misuse this, so deadly a menace to mankind. without saying. Egypt too, has been transformed into a must be feeling a deep sense of relief and joy in that the country is now safe from the possibility of Italian invasion. Relief must be felt in Syria and in Turkey and the Greeks

vice.

America Aroused

It is no longer Hitlerism, how-

ever, that we are fighting: it is the threat of world-Hitlerism, the many faceted evil thing which the Dictators of the Axis and their satellites call the New Order. This

black shape already custs its sh

tant places.

Mr. Cordell Hull's recent speech at Washington will have brought home to many on this side of the Atlantic, as on his, a vivid real- truth. President Secretary of State spoke as if he had just been smit-

en by the blinding light of a sud-

fighting a marvellously ow upon the world's most dis- gallant battle in the ter rific cold of the Albanian mountains, must be cheer. ed beyond measure to sation of this know that the Army of Roosevelt's Italy, which set out only а comparatively short de revelation, time ago to 'persuade" declared, "not of local or regional

"We are the presence," I the Greek Government wars but of an organised and de- "to listen to reason and termined movement for steadily

expanding conquest." bow to Italian rule," has

Those taking part in this move- been completely routed.ment call themselves the "Have- Nots," who are short of room to It has hardly taken one live and expand, who demand the month to turn General colonies which belong to other Graziani's African cam-velopment and conquest, and are nations by right of discovery, de- .paign into a devastating resolved to take by force what

defeat.

they cannot gain by cajolery or fraud.

"They are on the march," said Mr. Cordell Hull, armies, au fleets and navies.......... "with great

They physically disregard every sight of a neutral nation, They threaten peaceful nations with the

dirist consequences if they do not

erors are seizing other contin- emain acquiescent while the con- ents and most of the seven as

The Italian propagand ist, Signor Ansaldo, edit- or of Count Ciano's news- paper "Telegrafo," has had a difficult task pre- paring the Italian public for the news of the fall of Bardia, which he must now supplement by giving the news direct. But it is not altogether the effectences "inere excesses of the ex- of this bad news on the Italian people which mat-¦

is the

of the earth."

Slave Nations

Nor one al these brutal vio-

on the faces of their victims:

"By deed, by utterance, the would-be conquerors have made abundantly clear that they are engaged in a relentless attempt

to transform the civilised world,

By J. B. FIRTH

Bismarck Outdone

of

The phenomenon we face to day is of a totally different kind "an organised movement for expanding conquest." It is some- thing new in degree if not in kindly revealed by the collapro

I could not fairly be charged

one small neutral after another even against Bismarck, the man and then by the appalling collapse of Blood and Iron, that he or- ganised his new Germany for

The heart of France stopped, "steadily expanding conquest." He because the soul of France had

of France.

spread the virus of defeatism. low; the Army riddled with poli- Corruption in high places and in

lected and let down, and Hitler's tical intrigue; the Air Force neg→ agents everywhere at work.

we have known it, into two snatched the Duchies from Den- rotted. The secret poisoners had worlds in which mankind will

mark and Alsace-Lorraine from be reduced again to the degrada- and that not merely because he France, but Austria he spared. tion of a master and slave rela- tionship among nations and in-lent neutrality when he came to knew he would want her benevo- dividuals maintained by brute settle with France. force."

Uacompro- mising Prussian though he Was, it did not enter his mind to keep Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Hol- land and France in permanent subjection to Germany. He was content if his new Germany was Twe points, therefore, stand out organised so as to be more ready clear. The Axis Dictators are

for war than her neighbours, and alert to squeeze post-conquest status assigned bent upon world domination. The always on the

to concessions out of other nations the conquered is permanent sub-by rattling the sabre. But he had jection.

no plans or time-tables of con- tinuous conquest.

That is the New Order which is to be established in: Europe, Asta and Africa and later. If and when opportunity offers, in the Americas.

|

"Local and regional wars" have been the commonplace of Euro- Hitler's most respectable pre- pean history since the collapse of text for aggression was that he the Roman Peace. Martial kings only sought to restore to the Reich and martial States have been in bodies of German origin which perpetual conflict with their were aching to return to the coveted province neighbours in order to gain some ¦ Fatherland. He gave repeated as- or make their surances that when he had re- frontiers more secure. Territorial covered Austria and the German

often reinforced acquisition

by districts of the Sudetenland he úconomie jealousy has been the would be fully satisfied, for he ruling motive of dynastic and did not national ambition. Sometimes the foreign elements to act as irritanis want large intrac able

spoils have been consolidated by within the Rejch. Enough is it the victors: sometimes they have to say that he lied at each success. heen recovered by the temporarily and that his territorial horizons dispossessed,

are now as boundless as wer. Napoleon's.

Certain districts like Alsace,

been tossed over the

Imminent Peril

Transylvania, Savoy, not to speak of islands possessed of good har- bourage, have swung from side to side with the centuries and He denies it, of course, as Napo- conference leon denied it. He has burgled table from crown to crown. Hard- an entry into one neutral country ly a country in Europe has retum-after another on Napoleon's pre

l its boundaries unchanged text of "protecting' them frum through the lifetime of its oldest | British aggression, He professes inhabitant: new States have been 'a passion for justice and a yearn-

tere at this stage in Bane We Are All in the Same

effect on the Axis part-| ners generally. The col-

I have been

looking through|

Victorian

pretty true tune of the nation's

mood.

Boat

Punch is full of

They really did make fabulous fortunes out of the blood and sweat of millions--and not only the armament kings.

There was hardly a department of industry which could not show

"Napoleon "once said at St. Hel- ena that if his Army of Invasion has got to London the canaille would have welcomed him. Not so. They would rather have seen him torn to pieces; his sentimental admirers were found in the super- for classes. Hitler has made much the same mistake. But

how

should this foul fellow know the British mind?

Stupendous Gamble

He has plunged into a stupend- ous ganible. No such massive scheme of world conqucat Was ever launched before. No partners in aggression ever planned to share so rich a booty. Whole provinces of France and the French Colonial Empire, the Bri- tish Colonial Empire, even if the as Dominions are graciously spared. Italian beyond German or digestion: British possessions ink Africa, in the Near East, in the Middle East, in the Far East, and in the Pacific: sugar islands; rub- ber islands; some of the world's best ha bours and strategic key points; colomes in good going or- and

der, with docks, railways with native populations which have learnt the ways of peace and order, yet, according to Nazi and Fascist propagandists, will leap with joy to change their British servitude for German, Italian and even Japanese freedoms.

Japan is to be allowed to hold the gorgeous Far East in fee, and perhaps unless Fate, in the formidable shape of the Ameri- ca. Navy, forbids build up a mighty military Empire which

but can they honestly claim that shall take charge of the Philip- it has been so up to now, even if pines, the Netherland Indies and they are standing among the shat-show the flag of the Rising Sun tered houses of the East End? in Australasian waters,

Between 600,000 und 700,000 young men were killed in the last war in four years. That is between 400 and 500 a day for four years. The mind is horror-struck by these figures.

Those figures are significant, Do not let us forget them.

These dreams of diseased mill- tarists in a madhouse do not terri- y me: they are bound to break on the rocklike resolution of free peoples if only the free peoples have nerved: themselves to meet The shock.

lapse of Italian resistance some old volumes of "I_nch." in the Mediterranean will Mine must be one of

y thou- rands of families who h... allow the Navy to relin-volumes,

e these stretching back in a quish some of its stronger ng line to the eighteen forties units elsewhere--a pros-through du Maurier's

them, and it and the drawings of Leech, going was not exaggerating when it held up their unpicasant qualities to pect which the Axis can-age and the cartoons of Tenniel, ridicule. These people really did not visualise with any tieth century with

and galloping through the twen- flaunt their wealth in the faces of

a perpetual

a suffering people. equanimity.

jangle of jester's bells.

Often those bells, in my opin Hitler has been hesitation, have sounde a false note,

brat on the who they ring ing for some weeks as to the course he should pur- sue. He cannot afford to hesitate much longer. Italy's defeat in Africa ap- said good-bye to all that! We may pears, to be too complete be as slow as ever, as muddled as its bloated profiteers. Well, the for much, further resist-ever though I would, strongly Excess Profits Duty has put an

question, it--but we're infinitely end to that. ange there while the Ital suporion in other ways. We've If you drew a picture of a pro-ness and her native humour, when and the crash, of fallen idols and

draw him from imagination. The admitted, into the current of hen fiteer to-day you would have to that intolerable expression was bastard: Dietatorships: animal is extinct. munition workers with their grand planos? The comic papers are full of them.

Particularly in time of war. As I closed the volumes dealing with the last war I said to my-

self: "Well, thank heavens we've

By Beverley Nichols

And then, do you remember the

Debts Of Vengeance Finally, and in my opinion most important, for it is proof of a tr- We get more and more ready mendous change for the better in day by day: the United

'States, our social mentality, there has shielded by their, superb. Navy in been no resuscitation of that hate- the Pacific and by the British ful phrase "temporary gentle- Navy in the Atlántic, will set to work, in earnest; now that they Such a phrase, in these clean-have settled the momentous ques- er, better days, is inconceivable. tion, whether they wanted their it is an old bugbear, of mine, great: President: ta, have a, third but I have always thought that term of office or not. And: now Britain lost both her native-kind-in, due time the grand offensive

man.

common talk.

To sneer at a herp,- for, it was

For the choice, as Mr. Cardell Hull truly said, is between Free- dum, andi. Servitude. We know

ian army in Albania is be of odious sentimentally. We've stripped ourselves of a great deal ing pushed slowly, but thrown, overgpartia, load of cant, steadily back. What will that song that was dinned, into our

sneer because he wasn't so what freedom ist we can only For example, do you remember Hitler do next? Take over ears in 1915 and 10166. We

smart with a fork, as with bayo judge by the appeiling: fate which the Italian Army as he don't want to lose you, but we

net, to hold him up to ridicule has overtaken Polandi and think you ought to go?"

Those jokes always struck me because his feet weren't so agila Czechoslovakia what it means, to has the Air Force, place A song; to make you shudder if as unfortunate. I never saw. why on the dance floor as on the bair live, in: terror of the: Gestapo,, the

a grand piano should be so comic "tlefield it was unforgivable.. Mussolini im still greater ever there was oncl

Jast wordi - Hitler's, word) ----. In The social chaos. It impliedi: The an object just because it was in The fact that this phrase is the instruments afi tyranny, which bondage then at present inequality, the injustice!

the house of a worker, Anyway, | dead-together with the spirit that since history began, tyrants. have` and seize what remains of That song was sung to embar- that little source of merriment created it-is a proof; oft an imr laboured to, devise

rassed; soldiers in, plain, clothes, to has dried up.

mense advance in; aur, conception:/ the Italian Flest? It would equally embarrassed soldiers in

There is no need to look be- Now that all workers are in the of social values.

yond; the Gestapo, to: form, one's seem that he has not over-uniform to smirking shirkers and front line indeed, the average

It isn't only that an able-bodied judgment of Nazism, of Fascism to, blushing, consumptives who munition warker is, in a very seaman can now lunch at the Ritz or of Phalangism -- if that ob-. much choice in the mat looked hale and hearty enough much more dangerous situation next door to an admiral ter: General Blomberg's outside, but v we actually on the than the average soldiers in camp vided he tea bag the bill, pro- scure, and, minor variant is worth a. mention. Without the Gestapo danger listi

-nobody is going to. quarrel: it It isn't only. that we've all been they could not survive a month. own prophecy in which he

Conscription,which is a much they earn enough, wages to buy jumbled up with the most im- When their military, strength le warned Germany from more democratic word than Com- a few luxuries.

probable people gleeping in broken in the field the Gestapo muniam has put an end to all

shelters with aged and unknown will not survive a day, and many talking the Italians as al that.

scavengers (that was my neigh-a debt of vengeance, I trust, will lies is coming true The And do you remember the war

bour recently) nestling affec- be repaid with interest as the tor- tionately up to us. „General is now in a con

it's rather tured pooples awaken to find the, fact that at long last we feel themselves free once more.. ourselves in the same boat. Really in the same boat.

iprofitears?

centration camp for his ing when they visualise

Where they'll find the luxuries to buy is another question, for the whole country is stripped down to a fighting, standard of living.

Again, do you remember-or | perhaps it never struck you the appalling slaughter of youth, by dected in the cartoons?

temerity, but Hitler and to-day, the overwhelming the tons of thousands, that is re-

immediate advisers responsibilities facing must remember his warn- them.

his

People say that this war may be so much worse than the last;

And an open boat on a stormy sed, which in much better place to mako; friends, than a luxury liner.

“The master and slave relation- ship among nations and indivi- duals”- is not for the 20th Cen- tury, The New Order is only a foul and scientific resurrection of the worst Old Order of the past,