Amongst the more joyous of German propaganda publications which have come notice is a book by William Joyce, well known as "Lord Haw-Haw," entitled "Twilight over England." It is quite impossible to libel the author, for in the very first paragraph of the author's preface Joyce admits that "the writer is a daily perpetrator of High Treason." The preface is a typical piece of that sort of hypocrisy to which renegades invariably re~ sort to justify themselves in their own eyes, and they hope in the eyes of their fellows, for accepting the thirty pieces of silver. And Joyce, who confesses that he knows no "better motto in the world than Ad major em Dei gloria,'" goes on to explain how he and his wife decided, on August 25 last, to go to Germany and offer his services to his country's enemy. The gem follows "England was going to war. I felt that if, for pericet reasons of conscience, 1 could fight for her, I must give her up for ever. 'Such an argument I do not commend to any. body else: but man ig guided by more than Feason alone: and in this great confiet, 1 wanted to play a clear and definite part'
The puny fellow thought Germany was going to win, so, playing for safety, he offered his services to Germany, pleading the influence of a conscience completely dulled by looking out for the main chance, After about eighty pages of the turgid nonsense, which, if he really believes what he has written, might serve to justify in his own mind his apostasy, Joyce occupies nearly thirty pages in taking a "swipe" at the Jews. The mode is a pale imitation of Streicher, and an attempt to show how Jewish interests have so greatly permeated all strata of British society, finance and industry. The whole case that Joyce endeavours to set up was clearly answered some time last year in the book entitled "The Truth about the Jews in Britain." But such people as Joyce are not concerned with the truth. He dare not be, lest that conscience which he invokes as the justification of his treachery should in' turn But Joyce on the subject of the totalitarian state is really at his best "From the viewpoint of the worker, the most important aspect of the totalitarian state remember isthe—fact that—its organic nature does not permit the existence Moating masses of poor and unemployed Outside the structure of society. Every single worker knows and feels. his relationship to the state as a whole. He knows his rights as Well as his duties, Ife knows he cannot get Out of the state what he fails to put into the state: but he knows that what he does put fin, he will get back in Cull measure. The German worker Is etiabled by the State to take wonderful holidays; he can cruise to Madeira: he can go to the best opera in the world: he can enjoy himself at winter sports indeed it is no exaggeration to say that the rich have no pleasures which have not been ut' at his) disposal."
They are few or no unemployed in Germany. That is true. Conscription, the maintenance of huge armies, concentration camps, and. forced labour have done away with that. It may be that what the German worker puts) into the state he gets out of the state; in exchange for butter he gets a nice nourishing cannon, for other foods which help the war machine he gets the ersatz products of the German scientist. A few hear good opera, fewer still make glorious cruises, some can indulge in winter sports, but all are subjected to 2 system which allows no man {o call his! soul his own.
It is impossible to take Lord Haw-Haw seriously as an advocate for the German cause. The whole of the book is redolent with the abuse and the claptrap of Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. He writes nothing which British ideas of freedom would not permit him to shout at practically every street cor ner, and in some ways it is not unlike the remark of a speaker on Tower Hill one lunch time: "Yer asks what is this ere Communism! Til tell yer, Communism is the "igh cost of living. That's wot it is." The whole work is just as completely foolish, and can only arouse astonishment that the Germans, whose propaganda can at times be clever, ever came to perpetrate the gaffe of leifing Lord Haw-Haw creep into print. As a broadcaster he has a definite amusement value. As an author he is silly and as a traitor merely a fool.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.