An interesting note has been discovered in the character of recent utterances of Nazi leaders. After a long silence, amounting almost to scorn, there has been a faltering return to religion as a topic for propaganda purposes on a realization that spiritual things cannot be absent from every-day life no matter how material may be the atmosphere and objects. This was notable in the speech of Hitler on Sunday on the occasion of the memorial day to Germany's war dead when a new and almost ecclesiastical Hitler appeared. For a man who reduced the church in Germany to innocuous servility, filled his concentration camps with pastors who preferred their faith to that of the Nazis, and established a new standard for religious persecu-ion, Hitler's speech on Sunday sounded very odd. "We wish for no other God than Germany" was his original dogma and the watchword of his terrorist campaign was "The Cross must fall if Germany is to live" On Sunday. he appeared in a different mood although it was not as an appellant but almost in defiance that he evoked the blessing of Almighty God to aid the German cause, A historical examination of this new tendency in Nazi oratory traces the change to the moment when the meeting between the Pope and the King of Italy was announced, and it has been carried out with methodical exactitude ever since. It is continuing at a time when Italy not only rapidly re-assuming leadership in the Balkans, but is also being accepted as the leader of Catholicism against the anti-Christ of Bolshevism, especially in the Iberian peninsula, If Russia can be diverted away from the Balkans to the Near East and India, Germany looks to an active revival of the Axis and of her plans for world coalition. Throughout Christmas and New Year this new religious theme was expanded as the particular nature of the observance lent itself admirably to the purpose, although here and there were scattered those poisonous barbs of hate which revealed the mockery of the efforts. The latest mani-testation with Hitler in the principal part brings the new campaign to its fullest fruition, but whether the expected political results will acerne remains to be seen. Von Ribbentrop received a chilly reception in Rome, both at the Foreign Office and the Vatican, which has centuries of experience in exposing the shallowness of religious pretences.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.