26 DECEMBER 1941, Page 4

Has anyone, I wonder, pursued the hackneyed term " new

order," as a counter in both Nazi and Japanese propaganda, to its source? A paragraph in Otto Strasser's new book, L'Aigle Prussien sur L'Allemagne, takes it back to very nearly the earliest days of the Nazi movement. In the summer of 1919, Herr Strasser writes, the notorious Captain Roehm (a victim of the 1934 blood-bath) said to him, " We shall seize power by force of arms, but for that we must have in our minds the idea of a new order." It would be interesting to know if an earlier reference can be found. Hitler, more accustomed to appropriate than to originate, may well enough have made his own a phrase which Roehm had coined.

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