Evening star., 1942-01-25


since this war began I have wanted II
know clearly what we are supposed
to be fighting for and what we ar,
fighting against.
BY chance, in the house Of the Foreign
Minister of Bermuda, I encountered Ottt
Strasser, and the manner Of our meeting
and one or two things about 1t aroused
my curiosity so violently that have
gone on accommodating material about
him ever since. am going to summarize
here for the convenience of Mr.. Anthony
Eden for whom my respect grows By
leaps and bounds) and of any member
of Parliament who may want to make
use of it. I want to know why Otto
Strasser is not in concentration camp
and why he has been petted and en-
couraged by number of people in re-
sponsible positions in Britain and Canada
He and his brother Gregor were blood
stained Nazis. He makes considerable
claim to copyright in the Nazi idea, and
he was the close associate of Goering
Hess, Hitler and the rest OF them for
some years. Gregor Strasser. Hitler,
Hess, were all together after the abortive
Munich putsch in the free and easy
prison of Landsberg, where "Mein
Kampf" was concocted. (Goering had
bolted abroad) StraSser tells the story
with obvious resentment and sort of
scandal-making malice in his Hitler ct
Moi" and particularly how his brother
discovered those charming people, Hmm
Ter and Goebbels, and how basely these
valuable finds betrayed him and pre-
ferred to follow Hitlers star.
Remarkable Propaganda.
There is considerable Otto Strasser
propaganda going on; you can get a
whole row of it in uniform bindings, and
one of its leading books, Nemesis" by
Douglas Reed, gives the story OF this
man that Hitler fears" in a color far
more f1attering and acceptable to the
English turn of mind than Strasser's own
self-revelation. He has translated Hit
Ter and I" into spirited English and there
you can read a lot of stuff that I, for
one. am disinclined to believe, about
Hitler's unspeakable vices. This sort
of thing:
"'And to think Paul murmured one
evening, that Gregor once stopped Hitler
from committing suicide
"'When was that?' I asked, not very
attentively.
Paul hesitated, then continued in q
low voice:
AFTER Hitler murdered his niece
Gely.'
"At this I started.
"Did Gregor tell you that?'
paul nodded.
"T swore to keep it secret. Gregor
spent three days and three nights with
Adolf, who was like a madman. He shot
her during a quarrel. Perhaps he did
not realize what he was doing. AS soon
as he had done it, he wanted to commit
suicide, but Gregor prevented him."
And 50 forth. He explains how he
came to know such remarkable particu-
lars. He knew Gely. Il used to pay her
attentions. She was no prude." And
by q singular coincidence he knew all
about it from a certain photographers
daughter. She, too, was no prude. There
are also long conversations between
Strasser and Hitler, told with mar
velous fullness-Strassers memory must
be wonderful-in which Adolf gets told
off amazingly.
Met Strasser in Bermuda.
Strasser and, for that matter, his
friend Douglas Reed write better when
they refrain from autobiography.
Strasser is well-read man and he can
run philosophical basis" for his views
as convincingly as most of us; he can
generalize about secular movements of
power as wildly as that industrious
propaganda of pro-German Inevitable
ity, Rudolf Steiner, and he has even a
'law of triune polarity of his very own.
It is the old question of the one and
the many, beaten up with Hobbies and
that ersatz history which Germans
affect. Like prohibition whisky, It looks
oil right until you come to tackle it.
I met this remarkable man at the end
Of 1910 on my way back from America
where had been lecturing and talking
upon the absolute necessity of co-opera-
ton between the English-speaking world
and Russia. I was held up by the
weather in Bermuda and, as had heard
in America Of notion for dealing with
U-boats that seemed to be good, I went
to the Foreign Minister of Bermuda, for
Bermuda has a foreign minister of its
own, to get him, inter ALA, to send a
cipher message to the Admiralty about
this notion.
I need not have bothered. AT White
hall was handed over to sort of pro-
fessional snubber of no scientific stand
ing whatever that could discover, who
conveyed to me that the navy did not
want to be bothered with this notion,
and when protested to the first lord
he told me that the notion had been
considered but that all experimenting
with 1t had been stopped at the outbreak
Of the war. (Oh England My Eng
landD The only things for me to do
seemed to be to break windows or shrug
my shoulders. did the latter.
Insanely Anti -Bolshevik.
The navy is learning, as it prefers to
do, in the expensive school Of experience
and we have got to build lot more
battleships. But that is by the way
II nothing came of that anti-submarine
notion (unless it got to the Germans OF
Japanese) it did at least lead to my dis
covery Of Otto Strasser in Bermuda.
I was told of the great and wonderful
secret and in an atmosphere Of hush
hush, we met. We shook hands, knew
very little of him then except as a dis
tinc,Iished German refugee from Hitler