Evening star., 1937-10-29
Nazis' Place in the Sun.

ultler now mas MS receipt, as tne
Teutonic idiom has it, for the glamor-
Gus welcome extended to Mussolini in
Berlin and Berchtesgaden last month.
Yesterday, as the seven hills of Rome
reverberated with the pomp and bonn
bast of Fascism's fifteenth anniversary,
II Duce digreSsed in his paean of self
glorification to say something designed
to warm the heart of the brother die
tator in Germany.
That country, Mussolini thundered
before 100000 Black Shirts assembled
to do him honor and obeisance, must be
restored to its place in the African
sum-" Certain clauses OF the World
War treaties need to be revised, he de-
clared, because 1T is necessary that
great people, the German people, have
once more that colonial position to
which they are entitled and which they
once possessed The Tiberian auto
crat intimated that Italy, having Gre
ated her empire" with her own blood
and resources without touching sin
gle corner of the empires of others"
page Emperor Halle SelassieD, is Colo
nially appeaSed. 1t is now another un-
satisfied Fascist community, the Reich,
for which II Duces heart bleeds in COM
passion and Naelpfulness.
Whether this touching assurance of
Italian support will now impel Germany
to launch formal drive for her former
colonies will doubtless soon manifest
itself. Hitler, at successive Nurembergs
and on other occasions, has voiced such
demand with varying vociferation.
How genuine that clamor is open to
question. Little less questionable is the
validity of the stock argument that the
Reich needs "a place in the sun" as an
outlet for surplus population and
source of raw materials. In 1918, after
nearly thirty years of colonial owner
ship, there were fewer than $4,000 whites
in all the $4,000 square miles of Ger
man colonies, and this figure included
officials. soldiers, police, missionaries,
and even the Japanese in German New
Guinea.
Claims that colonies are indispensable
because of rawstuff needs are almost as
specious. Considering the vast subsidies
which the pre-war Reich squandered on
administration of her overseas possess
sions, it would pay the Nazis hand
somely to buy cotton, copper and pc
troleum from have" countries eager to
provide such commodities as long as
Germany and other have nots" possess
the wherewithal. Aeons before the
Hitler dispensation, German critics of
the Bismarckian SHOW window" policy
of acquiring colonies pilloried them as
"graveyards for subsidies"
In "Mein Kampf," the Nazi Koran,
Der Fuehrer discusses with disarming
candor the Reich's wrong continental
policy before the war" He deplores the
fact that instead of "a sound European
pUllCy, SClludily 4CSOl tCu W
colonial and trade policy" The right
thing, even then, he adds, would have
been the strengthening of continental
power through the acquisition of terri
tory in Europe. Exactly thereby later
expansion in the form of colonial areas
would have appeared in the course of
natural possibilities" Hitler comedies
that such policy would have been feas-
ible only in alliance with England" or
at the cost of prodigious military effort.
Here seems telltale corroboration OF
reports long current in Europe and
America that Hitler's colonial demands
are sheer bluff; that his purpose is to
blackmail Britain and France, not into
surrendering the ex-German colonies
now held by them under League man
date, but into acceding to the Reich's
real program of expansion at the ex-
pense of Austria, Czechoslovakia and
the Russian Ukraine.