If prisoners of war working on farms and in other non-military production are included, it is probable that there are now two million foreigners being used virtually as slaves in Nazi Germany. The official German report on the number of foreigners who are now being employed in industrial plants in the Reich sets the figure at 670,000, but it is probable that the total is nearly a million. Some of these have been decoyed away from their own countries by specious promises. Others, like many from Poland, have simply been forcibly removed and put to work in cities whose names they did not learn until they. had actually arrived. The condition of these unfortunates is the nearest approach to slavery which has been reached in Europe for more than a century. The Polish workers who have been so transferred have been given absolutely no choice, They have merely been informed at a few hours notice that they must go,.and, have rounded up and placed in trains to take them to their unknown destina. tions. In other countries, where the Nazis still hope to delude the population into the belief that the "new order" which Hitler has apparently in the back of his mind is really a good thing and will- ultimately redound to their advantage, there are various subterfuges employed. Danish workers, for example, are given six months contracts on terms which seem on the surface to be remunerative. If the worker consents to remain on over this six months' period, his wages are increased. But there are so many restrictions enforced that few will agree to the renewal of their contracts. Many of the Danish workers who have been employed in Germany have complained that as soon as they arrived at their destinations, they were informed that there were several extra clauses which had to be signed before their contracts were in order. These clauses were always to the detriment of the worker. They controlled his savings and limited his power to remit money he had earned home to his family. The result has in some cases been considerable distress among their dependents. For the worker never been allowed to repudiate the swindling contract he had been deceived into signing. While the Nazis were not prepared to stick to their side of the bargain, the worker was forced to stick to his, even though it meant the possible starvation of his family. There is accumulating evidence that not a single pledge—religious, inter-or commercial—which the Nazis offer the paper itis written on. Their be, tradal of governments of neighbouring countries who believed in them is already notorious. But a similar absence of any moral code controls their conduct towards the individual inhabitants of the countries they have conquered or overrun by consent. There is no question of Nazi consideration of the rights of the individual The individual simply does not have any. The conquered or overrun peoples are there to be used for the convenience of their over-lords. They are reduced to mediaeval status of slaves. The knowledge of this is spreading, and it should prove a powerful factor in preventing any more easy conquests by infiltration such as Hitler has gained in the past.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.