* * * * -German " Firmness " The speech
delivered on Sunday by Herr Hess, the Deputy Leader of the National Socialist Party, in the presence of Herr Hider is described in a message from Berlin as having created the impression of German firmness abroad." To speak of an impression of German hysteria would be much more accurate. Well might The Times head its report of their fantastic attack on Czechoslovakia " Herr Hess's Tirade." Where in that country are any minorities "frightfully deprived of their rights, terrorised and mishandled ? " What relation to facts is there in the declaration that- " a sudden mobilisation is a threat to the peace of Europe " ? What again, in the name of sanity, is meant by the warning that " less than ever will an attack on Germany be a military promenade " ? What nation in the world dreams of attack- ing Germany—unless Germany has taken the aggressive first ? The danger, and the criminality, of all this, of course, lies in the fact that every word of it, like every other gross misrepresentation of the European situation, is reported faith- fully in the German Press, from whose columns the truth, which would expose the mendacity of Herr Hess's statements, is rigorously excluded. To that form of warfare, or prepara- tion for actual warfare, there is no effective answer, except the foreign wireless ; and that can reach no large public in Germany. '
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