IS GERMANY PREPARING WAR ?
[To the Editor of Tim SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In the article by ,Herr Rudolf Kircher, editor Qf the Frankfurter Zeitung, there are at least three misstatements
which should not pais without being corrected. - - •
(a) " How is it possible to speak of a German army of a strength of 900,000 Men Y " asks Herr Kircher indignantly. In the Manchester Guardian Weekly of the mine -date its London diplomatic correspondent re its on sound calcula-
tions that the total strength of the military, naval and air force soon amounts to 1,200,000 men.
(b) Herr Kircher says that the Mosemi wireless descants in German on the Red Army, " which is ready to invadeGer- many " (quotation-marks by Herr Kircher) and turn her Communist. Here Herr Kircher credits the English- reader with perfect stupidity. FOr without such it is impossible to believe .that if the Missions intend to fall. on .poor Germany they will announce their plot by broadcasting it beforehand. Of course, the MOSCOW wireless never-has said anything like (c) Against all references to Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, Herr Kircher pretends that this book is of no importance for the understanding of Herr Hitler's designs, quite out of date and to be explained by the fact that " Herr Hitler was defeated and imprisoned when he wrote his book." Here we are in front of one of the grossest fabrications that are left on record. Ever since coming to power Hitler himself and his agents have over and over again propagated all over the world, but never within their country, the same falsification that has again been rendered by Herr Kircher. The enormity of this is astonishing, for the real facts are obvious. The truth is : only the first volume of that book, containing mainly his own biography and the story of his party, had been written in 1924, when he was for only a few months not in prison, but in a very comfortable and even honourable confinement at a Bavarian fortress. The second volume, comprising all his statements about foreign policy, especially his precepts about alliances with England and Italy, annihilation of France and conquest of Russia, has been written after his release, and has been completed after the evacuation Of the Ruhr and Cologne zone, and even after the conclusion of the Locarno Treaty in Octo- ber, 1925. There is not the slightest doubt about these dates, as the Locarno Treaty is mentioned in the second volume, already at that time, ten years before the Franco-Soviet pact, represented by Hitler as high treason against the German people.
Ever since the installation of Hitler's government his book has been proclaimed officially " the Bible of the German people " and has been and is being forced by all means of pressure On the Germans without any word altered. Only recently it was proudly stated that the sales have surpassed 2,500,000 copies, incidentally not a bad job for Herr Hitler, who has boasted of being the only statesman in the world that has not a bank account, for each copy costs about 12s., and Herr Hitler is at the same time chief owner of the publishing firm, which also owns the biggest German newspaper, the V alkische Beobachter. The forced sale of Mein Kampf is going on, while a French edition has been prohibited with the aid of the law-courts and while in England an abridged and, in important parts, mistranslated edition is circulated.—I am,
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