Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-10-12
BY COUNT CARLO sFoRzA,
Former Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs
and Ambassador to France.

: m rel si the ?:s ssss; .es
NM Adolf Hitler and his troops
v at the last German general
election? Is it to be taken
as serious setback to the cause o1
| peace? Such are the questions one
hears now everywhere in Europe, these
| Balkans of the world.
There is no doubt that the duel OF
hatred has begun again seriously In
France and Germany and artificially In
Italy. There is no doubt that the whole
of Europe is again conjugating the verb
Ito arm" and that the various European
governments are thinking only of meas
ures to prepare for war! The atmos-
phere Is or seems to be just the same
as that which prevailed in the fatal
years from 1910 to 1914, when every
body was proclaiming his desire for
peace but was already thinking IN
terms of war. Just as 1t happened IN
those fateful years, SO now everybody
is putting the blame on his neighbor,
thus hiding the reality from his own
people with a screen Of patriotic and
hypocritically peace-loving phraseology.
Stock Taking Of Europe.
Such being the general psychological
situation in Europe, 1t might be useful
to take stock of 1t and carefully and
serenely to examine the pathological
spots whence the danger of wrecking
Europe is supposed to come-the va
rious relationships and the rising ma
tionalistic movements.
To begin with Hitler's recent victory
the Hitler phenomenon is serious but
not surprising! When one thinks of the
economic interests at stake in Germany
80 hn hickA fvpo% vHyhi nj
make I'D the German life, one ought to
be surprised not at the victory of the
Hitlerians, but at the surprise of the
world at large at this victory. The
Hitlerian movement is a second edi-
ton of the italian Fascist movement
by which I do not in the least mean
to say that 1t is a copy Of it-and an
Italian who closely watched the rise
of Fascism Is perhaps more entitled
than others to study what Is hidden
under the slogans of the new party.
First of all-until he proves that we
are wrong-we may dismiss as not
ESSENTIAL to the study Of the phenome-
non its very leader, Herr Hitler. Both
during the electoral campaign and after
he never said anything which showed
that he had ideas of his own beneath
the usual skill Of the demagogue in us
ing his catchwords. 1t has been impos-
sible to elicit any answer from him as
to how he thinks he will be able to
realize his stupendous program of bread
and freedom for all! Or how he con-
ceives that he will be able to realize
his. foreign policy Of stopping all pay
ments of reparations and of rejecting
the Young plant! Or how he is going to
be able to regain the Polish corridor
which divides Eastern Prussia from the
rest of Germany. To all such questions
he has continued to give only one
answer-''Where there is will there Is
way" Truth to tell, the gentlemen Of
the Ku-Klux Khan were less reticent.
Hitler Not German.
About Hitler what is interesting and
amusing to note Is that this man, who
in thousands of speeches has contin-
ued to dwell upon the necessity for
Germany to revert to the cult of old
Wothan and to reject the impure
Semitic ideas of Christianity, can hard
ly be taken as specimen of the "se-
lected German race" as Count Co
bineau theorized about it. Herr Hitler,
this most terrible of German Ma
tionalists, is the son of an Austrian
father and Of a Slav mother.
The hidden faces and the hidden