Herr Hitler on the War
The speech delivered by Herr Hitler at the Sport Palace in Berlin on Tuesday, the seventh anniversary of his first appointment as Chancellor, is best summed up in the orator's own words (applied to another theme): "All this is neither new nor original. It is obsolete, stale stuffing which nobody can believe any longer." With his fingers dripping with the blood of tens of thousands of murdered Poles the Fiihrer for the fiftieth time dilated on the martyrdom imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. That and the time- worn demand for "living space" (which Germany is now providing by depopulating Poland) formed the subject-matter of most of the address. The rest was occupied to the speaker's satisfaction by sarcastic comments on various statements falsely attributed for the purpose to British spokesmen. The general conclusion was that since Britain and France wanted the war they could have it, for the 8o,000,000 Germans were sure of victory. Herr Hitler referred to Germany's "intimate friendship" with Italy, where how- ever, his speech has had a very tepid reception, and dwelt on Germany's centuries of cordial relationship with Russia, missing, however, the opportunity of a pertinent reference to the cordiality of their partnership in the partitioning of Poland in the eighteenth century as in the twentieth. Herr Hitler rarely makes particularly good speeches. This was even for him a particularly bad one. His threats to Germany's enemies may foreshadow some action to justify them, but threats by Herr Hitler are no new thing. Some American commentators detect "a ring of frustration" in the speech. It may be so. But the utterance was not coherent enough to justify assured conclusions.
