The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-09-06
Turning Hatred On And Of

Among the things that can be learned from the European situation, and not the least of it's unmitigated horrors, is the demonstration of how hatred can be turned on and off at will by those gov ernments which completely control press and radio There is something that makes free man Shiver in his boots to watch the manipulation of cast masses of people as though they were nothing but rows of photoelectric cells, reacting involuntarily to whatever rays of light their masters care to throw upon them
 For instance, recall the press cam paign in Germany just before the seizure of CzechoSlovakia All of a sudden, and in unison, all the German papers blos- Somed with stories about the abuse ot Germans in the Sudeten areas by the dominant CzechS. They were given no jobs, they were left to Starve in novels, they were subject to actual physical abuse, they were oppressed in various ways. The German people dutifully re- acted with a wave of anti-CZech feeling, and were ready to support Herr Hitler in any move he might make to remedy this situation.
 During the present crisis the German papers have been flooded once again with exactly the same stories of Polish oppreS- sion of German minorities in Poland, the Corridor, or Danzig. Whether these same old stories, with merely the setting changed, have succeeded in inflaming the German people sufficiently, we cannot yet tell. But that is their deliberate pur- pose, and it has worked with Stupefying success in the past. In the Russian German situation, the same thing has a ln0ct fhp German papers have been filled with stories describing the bestial and blood- thirsty depravity of the Russians. And the Russian press has abused the Ger man FascistS in almost the same terms.
 After 10 years of this, the head men in the two countries get together in a deal. The official Pravda in Russia congratu- lates the people that the obstacles which the nasty old democratic countries had been interposing between them and Ger many have at last been removed, and that now they can love the Germans just as they had wanted to all the time. Ger mans of official standing hail each other, perhaps a bit sheepishly, with "Heil Hitler! Rot Front" (Hail Hitler Red FrontD Even the Russian exhibit at the New York Fair, which has been show ing Professor Mamlock," violently anti-Nazi picture made in Russia, sud- denly withdraws it and begins showing "Lenin in 1917." It is just coincidence, insist attaches. Much the same sort of coincidence, one SupposeS, as brought the Russian-German anti-aggression pact just at the most critical moment of the Danzig affair.
 Nothing is too ridiculous to be believed if it is said loudly enough and often enough. People brought up in countries in which the state monopolizeS propa- ganda have been reduced to a gelatin ous mental state in which an order, You will begin on Friday at 2 p. m. to hate the Laplanders," would be obeyed without question. The hatred would be pro- duced just like turning on the water in the tap. One glimpse of this state of affairs should make Americans cling to their free press. with all its faults, as an Alpine climber clings to his guide rope.