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PUBLISHED WEEKLY.
ADDRESS: BOX J633, G.P.O.
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Official Organ of the Archdiocese of Perth: A CATHOLIC WEEKLY CIRCTTLATING THROUGHOUT THE STATE OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA. :STABLISHED 1874. Registered at the G.P.O., Perth, for Transmission by Post as a Newspaper. PRICE THREEPENCE
No. "808
PERTH, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1934
A DOLF I stil? ..inber vividly the occasion w hen lesard the name of Adolf Hitler. -aas in the spring of 1923, about s! : -.,,.oths before the ineffective Munie: - -•h, which took place in Novernh 'f that year, and whose main e • • as to give Hit'er enfereed •hc castle of Landsberg to write : - hiography. I was at the time a - Ho student in a German house and my e eripanimis scenes eerturbed ooe morning at the p seenal suoress of a meeting held by . ,.r" in Munich the day before. "W ie • o fellow 'Hitler?" I asked. "He h .eader of the new party, the N„t'• Socialists" was the answer. -Be t sses he a ant? What is he oat he a Socialist I persisted. "Oh. ee, ae is not a Socialist: he is a more: c of the Social Democrats, hke them he appeals to the wse'- . 1:1, anI uses arguments very e. theirs He want; to r estore e- monarchy in Bavaria, I think. Natienalist and a Sovolley sersdiite s an ap;e 1—=1' ' eatriotie eeetztaents of • the :: --en a So r- hilhs- appeal to their ceoet .- •eress." A nd ah a attempts to el-tain a dears:- and mese detailed exposition of his police aeoe without avail. Perhaps • es nv re detailed explanation w3s pas able? Adolf Hitler, the latest and in some ways most dramatic of our European dietatere is the son of an Austrian governmeie oeeheyee in poor circumstarces, al . of a Czechish mother, lie is not a German. and speaks German with a marked Austrian accent. He steels to-day at the head of the greatest military nation in Europe. How did he reach his present position What will be the results of his riee to power? To the latter question only a very bolcl. oracle would venture a response; and the f ormer question is almost as enigmatic, if one omit from one's calculations the element of Personality. Professor Daniel Binchy, in a most inteeerting article recently publisl ed in - Studies," gives some viy:d eersonal impressions: I ' first saw Hitler cei a murky November evening in 1921. A Bavarisn f ellow-student in Munich had inducethe University ot -1 him to a meeting elme to ac a)mpany what he described as "a new freak party- ' in the Burgerbraukeller. hall was net quite full, the audience seemed to be drawn f rom the poorest of the peer- the "down and outs' af the city. indeed. e xcept for a sprinkling CN• soldiers, I might we:1 cf obvious have believed myself assisting at a continuation of a Communist meeting which I had attended in a neighbouring hall a few nights previously. . .. "He rose to speak, and after a few minutes I had forgotten all about his insignificant Here was 'a born natural exterior. orator. He began slowly,
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almost hesitatingly, stumbling ovei the lows: and until 1919 in Munich, he had construction of his sentences, correct- entirely failed to attract others to his ing his dialect pronunciation. Then views. all at once he seemed to take fire. His voice rose victorious over falterings, hie: The year 1919, however, marked the eyes blazed with conviction, his whale beginnings of his triumph. He jo;ned. body became an instrument of rude and soon took possession of, the eloquence. As his exaltation increas- "Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, at the time ed, his voice rose almrst to a scream, a very struggling body. He chaaged his gesticulation became a wild panto. its name to the "National Socialist Labmime, and I noticed traces of foam at our Party of Germany," and his genies corners of his mouth. He spoke so for propaganda soon began to bear quickly and in such a pronounced din. fruit. There is a subtle fascination lect that I had great difficulty in fol. about a flaming red poster with a swaslowing him, but the .same phrases kept tika symbol in each corner, and in inrecurring all through his address like triguing challenge, "Jews not admitmotifs in a symphony: the Marxist ted." The adoption of red as the traitors, the criminals who caused the ground colour of the party's flag, anI Revolution, the German army which the use of the word "Socialist" in its was stabbed in the back. and—rrost in- name, both aimed at emphasising the sistent of all—the Jews. Th.-.o-e were party's complete break with middlesome interruptions, and I gathered class nationalism. Hitler's appeal is to from Hitler's attempts to deal with the two forces which, though very hetthem that he was utterly devoid of 'as erogeneous, are at the moment strongascendaney over the vast majority of est in Germany social life: patriotism his audience. His porple passages and the proletariat. were greeted with roars of applause, and when finally he sank ba-± exIn January, 1920, he soundly trounchausted into. his :bah-, tnere was a ed the Communists, who had endeascene of hysterical enthusiasm which voured to break up one of his meetings baffles description. As we left the in Munich. By February of that year, meeting my friend asked ma what I he had some thousands of devoted folthought of this new party leader. lowers. and fram that late until 4.1 e With all the arrogance of twenty-tne, present day, despite the ii- ,successful replied: "A harmless lunatic with the Munich Putsch in 1923 and the imprigift of oratory." I can still hear his sonment which followed it. he has retort: "No lunatic with the gift of been a growing force in Germao polioratory is harmless." tical life. Hitler was born on April 20. 1889, at 13raunau on the Ino, a village in Upper Austria, close to the Bavarian frontier. His father and mother both died before he was seventeen, and a few days after his mother's death, young hiltier took train to Vienna with his entire fortune, fifty gulden. in his packet. He was virtually withoat education. for he had learned nothing during the few Years spent at a Realschule near Linz. He nursed great hopes of being arlinitted to the Viennese Academy of Art, for he believed himself endowed with a remarkable talent for drawing: but the Academy would have none of him. and for four years he lived' in grind:ng poverty in Vienna, ma:king as ap ongkilled labourer.
What, then, are the ideas upon which his policy is built? Hitler is convinced of two things: 1, that the Aryan race, and in particular the German branch of it, are by natuic and endowments the lords of the world: and (2), that there can be no raclal and national regeneration of Germany until the claims of the proletariat have been satisfied. From these two principlea follow, in the eves of good Nazis, the violent anthSemitiarn which has evoked such comment and protest from the world a t large.
'The Jews are, according to Hitler, the greatest danger to the racial purity ef Germany. They are the parasites sf humanity, living fat lives at the exIn April. 1912, Hitler moved to Mun- pense ich. where he set up as a house-painter must of the noble Nordic races; they be crippled and their infuence and decorator. Then came the War, They are the leaders of inin which Hitler fought gallantly, won destroyed. ternational capital which grinds down woutirled an Iron Cross, was seriously proletariat, leaders, too, of the and in October, 1916. and practically blind- the Bolsheviks, whothe would destroy all ed about a month before the Armistia‘ nationalism: on these two (Taints if by an English gas-attack. on no others, they must be humbled, are as When the War was over, his eyesight The methods to be employedconfiscarestored. he returned to Munich, the once simple and attractive' Jewish capital and landed city of his affections, and began again tion of alldismissal of Jews from at to take, an active part in politics. From property, denial of then the time he left his home village, a public positions and even suppression of the friendless boy of sixteen, to wits his German citizenship. fortune in Vienna. he had beea keenly Jewish press. interested in the big problems. social, From these two leading ideas sprino, political, religious, which press up.7.n too, the party's Social policy. The our modern world: and he glories still Nordic race must be strengthened and in the claim that his philosophy of life kept pure: hence. evesy healthy Young was hammered out during those years German must he enabled to marry and in Vienna, complete and without re- found a family. But this means a re pentance, on the hap lazard and tiodi- volution of the. existing social order: a rected reading ofiadolescence. But he r evolution, not on the lines of Mansion was moody and unpopular with his fel- Socialism, which is international and
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(ultimately) pacifigt, but rather towards a strongly-centralised, state. regulated system, which shall enzke equal opportunities for all true Germans. We prefer not to discuss here the race-propagation establishments favoured by Hitler's cbief editor, Rosenberg, which Professor Binchy aptly describes as "human stud farms." More inteifesting is Hitler's intense hatred of international Socialism, which has degraded and denationalised the German worker: in its place Germany needs a Germanit soeialism, a national socialism, under which --this exe ploitation of the Nordic workman will cease. How does Hitler stand Lc:wards religion? His parents were pious Catholics, and be himseli es a child even wished to become a priest; but he is no longer a practising Catholic, and it is doubtful whether be st.11 holds interiorly the faith of his childhood. Yes, despite the violence of his more extreme followers, he has resolutely refused to turn his movement against the Catholic Church. the only live religious body in Germany to-day. which had always fearlessly corderntiel his etceases and refused to sanction his unChristian racist theories. Perhaps he realises, in spite of the superficial acter of his historical realing. that the Church in the past has faced and broken greater movements than Nazism. We conclude with another paragraph from Professor Binchy:—• "Some have attempted to explain Hitler's ascendancy by his eloquense, others by his genius for propaganda, ethers again by the fact :het he stands en the same intellect •.al plsin as the bulk of his followers While these are contributory factors. the perrenality left out of the man himself cannet account. His personal henesty and is interestedness are not disputed by any sincere opponent. But- the real secret of his power lies in his fanatical. almcst mystic, belief in himself and in !lia mission. "I am only fcrty-three years old." he told.his followers on the day after his defeat in the presidential election. "and I am in perfect health. I am convinced that nothine can happen to me., for I know that I have leen are aointed to my task by a higher power." Faith in himself and hi z micsien hae become for him a kind or religien."-D. DONNELT,Y. A second pilgrimage, which will be led by Archbishop Mederlet of Madras, will sail from India for Rome in March. The enthusiasm of the Pilgrims of the first gown who returned early in December has excited in•many the desire to make the jubilee visit to the Eternal City. The members of the second pilgrimage will be much more numerous than the first: all places en the steamship which has been chartered have been engaged. The second pilgrimage will follow more or less the route taken by the first, which was led by Father Le Tellier. It will visit the. Holy Land and Rome, and then go on to Lourdes.
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