NEWS OF THE WEEK
WE are a tolerant people, and the violence of the German Press and the bellicose rhetoric of speakers like Field- Marshal Goering, Dr. Goebbels, and Herr Hitler himself; are commonly accepted as part of the singular stock-in-trade of the Nazi Party. But the new campaign against British public men is hardly to be placed in that category. There is an accepted Nazi technique in such matters. Internally you launch a campaign against a certain class, e.g., the Jews, and then destroy them. Externally, e.g., in regard to Czecho- slovakia and Dr. Benes, it is precisely the same. And it is certainly no accident that in Herr Hitler's speech at Weimar Mr. Churchill and Mr. Arthur Greenwood were attacked specifically, in Herr von Ribbentrop's on Tuesday "war agitators" were assailed generically, and in Herr Hitler's further address at Munich on Tuesday Mr. Eden, Mr. Duff Cooper and Mr. Attlee joined Mr. Churchill on the black-list. This is, no doubt, another example of the usual German incapacity to understand national psychology, the assumption presumably ben; that British electors will with- draw their suffrages from men whose accession to power would irritate Herr Hitler. It would be a wise action on the part of Mr. Chamberlain or Lord Halifax in their own political interests, and a salutary one on wider grounds, if one or other of them took an early opportunity of stating publicly and plainly that foreign attacks on British public men of whatever party are little calculated to create an atmosphere of concilia- tion, and that the only effect on the individuals concerned is to increase materially their prospects of success at the next election.
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