Foreign News: Story of Mankind

”The astounding thing is that the great German people—educated, scientific, philosophical and romantic—not only did not resent [the Nazis’] horrible blood bath but endorsed it and acclaimed its author with the honors not only of a sovereign but almost of a god.

“Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds or remove the guilt of blood, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, wicked, even frightful methods, but who nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, bave been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So it may be with Hitler.”

This tribute to the Realmleader, tossed off three months ago by the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill in a potboiling piece for Vincent Astor’s Today, went unnoticed by German diplomats in the U. S. last August. When it potboiled up again in London’s Strand Magazine (which had bought it from Mr. Churchill, to whom the British rights were released on Sept. 18 by Today), the fat of cherubic “Winnie” was in the fire last week. Reason: Statesman Churchill in the interval has made his peace with British Prime Minister Baldwin and Germans, like everyone else, understood that by Christmas he would again be Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty. To the German Government it seemed that the most intolerable and provocative of affronts had been offered to Adolf Hitler last week, virtually by a member of His Majesty’s Government.

When the German Foreign Office loudly announced at Berlin that their London Embassy was making “the sharpest protest,” Mr. Churchill was on the electioneering stump having another fling at Adolf Hitler. Soon in British Government circles the word passed that if the Realmleader was really aroused it would be impossible, all because of a potboiler, to give Mr. Churchill the Cabinet plum he has been promised.

Thus Adolf Hitler, with the crushing kudos of sheer Might, may repress the hitherto irrepressible Winston Churchill. Now bent on figuring in the Story of Mankind as a kind, gentle figure, the Realmleader is currently being snapped by Nazi cameramen in poses which approximate those of the U. S. baby-kissing politician.