Probably the chief reason why the Nazis hate, and fear Mr. Winston Churchill is because he has at all times refused to be hoodwinked by the protestations of their leaders, and has observed past trends with that realistic eye for which he is famous. In a broadcast over the B.B.C. on January 21, which aroused comment all over the world, he asked with regard to the small neutrals of Europe What would happen if all small neutral nations concerned were spontaneously to do their duty in accordance with the covenant of the League of Nations, and stand together with the British and French Empires against aggression and wrong?
He said at present their plight was lament table, but it would become much worse. All of them hoped that the storm would pass before their turn came to be devoured; but the storm would not pass; it would rage and roar even more loudly, and widely, and spread to south, and north. There was no chance of a speedy end except through united action.
While the speech received much favourable notice abroad, there were some criticisms to the effect that Mr. Churchill was endeavouring to teach the neutrals their business, and seeking to align them against Germany to fight the Allied battle. Those criticisms were ill-founded, and in the light of all that has happened since he delivered that address it can now be rightly assumed that the man, who is now Prime Minister of Great Britain, was in fact telling the world at large what he foresaw would happen, and what everyone now knows has occurred. In Scandinavia the countries there failed to enter into an arrangement for common defence against aggression for fear of offending Germany. They sought to maintain as complete a neutrality as possible, though obviously for manifest reasons inclined in favour of Germany. It served them in no manner whatever. Denmark and the greater part of Norway fell before a sudden and treacherous onslaught. Sweden remains, isolated, and when it serves his purpose Herr Hitler will doubtless invade that country as well, and while Sweden may be in a posture to offer a sterner resistance than was Norway, she will in that event stand alone, facing the risk of being overrun as have been her neighbours.
Looking back over the early days of the war to the frantic efforts of the monarchs of the Low Countries in eleventh hour efforts to stave off the outbreak of hostilities, and the later endeavours in favour of peace, it is clear that they recognized the danger which existed for them in their proximity to a nation whose ruler, bound by no canons of decency, could, and would attack them whenever he thought fit. Those movements having failed they also sought to preserve such a neutrality as would give Germany no excuse for offence in the hope that the storm of war would still pass them by. They entered into no negotiations between themselves, or with the Allies, for the purpose of arranging a scheme of common defence, and nine days ago, two days before the commencement of the German invasion, Holland, it is now known, refused to inform the Allies of its plans of mobilization, and its aerial preparedness. Thus contrary to the lying reasons with which the Germans have sought to justify their latest outrage—though why in the light of all that has happened they should still seek to do such a thing is quite incomprehensible,—the fact is that the Low Countries determined to stick to that form of neutrality least calculated to arouse German ire, that they neglected to take those ordinary precautions which might have permitted them to act in concert against aggression no matter whence it came. And so, as a Netherlands personality is quoted as saying, "Having sacrificed vital contact with our neutral friends abroad by declining any staff consultations,—even with the Belgians,—we then had to sacrifice our liberty of action against enemies within Netherlands Nazis who were protected by Berlin. There was no neutrality. There never had been since the commencement of the war, for Herr Hitler, having decided that those who were not for him were against him, had slaughtered it in just as cold blood as that in which hundreds, nay thousands of innocent civilians have been murdered in the various countries upon which Naziism has laid its filthy hand.
That is a fact which the Balkan States have to face now, and until this war is ended. It is a fact which nations further from the scene of operations may in their turn have to face, one which almost as nearly concerns Italy itself, for "un it be believed that a victorious Hitler would have any compunction about attacking that country should it in any way serve his ambitions? If Il Duce fancies that he can depend upon more honourable treatment than Herr Hitler has accorded other nations, he is gambling with all the cards stacked against him. Fortunately he may never have to endure the disillusionment which other countries have experienced, but enough has been shown by the conduct of Der Fuehrer, in the manner in which he has played fast and loose with the Rome-Berlin Axis, to prove beyond a peradventure of a doubt, that it has no more strength than Herr Hitler decides it shall have. It follows that not one single country is safe in adhering to those conceptions of neutrality which have enabled wars in the past to be confined in scope and fought with some remnants of decency. That impression is gaining ground in the United States where the Government is bent on making more strenuous efforts to place its defences in such a condition as to be able to contemplate the possibility of onslaught in the future with some degree of complacency. No, neutrality is dead. Some may argue that in such an ideological war as this, amounting almost to a religious war, neutrality is impossible. That is decidedly not the case. It was possible for neutrality to live despite the bitterness which underlies this titanic conflict, but Herr Hitler, for his own purposes, and because he realizes that he must stick at nothing if he has to have a chance of ever winning this war, has killed it. And in doing so, his guilt is so great that he may well ask "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand?
rather No this my hand will The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green—one red."
The blood-soaked soil of Poland, Norway, Holland and Belgium, the dead, eloquently mute forms of fleeing civilians lying by many a roadside, whose only fault was that they lived close to Germany, tell the world that neutrality is dead, and that Herr Hitler killed it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.