3 FEBRUARY 1939, Page 6

The length of Herr Hitler's speech seems to have baffled

the calculators rather badly. According to Mr. Vernon Bart- lett in the News Chronicle, the speech was " almost half the length of the normal novel," and the normal novel, a leading publisher tells me, runs to about 70,000 words ; so let us put the speech at 30,000. The same paper advertised on its placard " Hitler's Speech in Full," and its report ran to 5,000 words. My own reckoning would be that the Fiihrer spoke about 120 words a minute for some 135 minutes—say rather more than 16,000 words. We can hardly all be right.