World Revolution

Herewith TIME presents condensed versions of two extraordinary speeches made last week. Together they did much to clarify the overwhelming problem facing the U. S. One was a speech by Adolf Hitler to the workers and women of Germany, delivered beneath shiny new cannon in the Rhein-metall-Borsig munitions works. The other was dictated by the British Ambassador to the U. S., the Marquess of Lothian, from his deathbed, and was read by Embassy Counselor Nevile Butler to the convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation in Baltimore.

In philosophy the speeches were a world apart, but their likeness was striking. Neither was polished. Hitler used too many theses and thoses and Lord Lothian too many buts. Each tacitly admitted grave military weaknesses on his own side. Both agreed that the war is not war but a revolution; that it must be fought to the bitter end; that Germany is fighting not only Great Britain, but the world of capitalism and free enterprise as represented by Britain and the U. S.

Hitler, in a magnificent piece of propaganda, argued that the cause of Naziism was not only the cause of the have-not nations, but of the have-not classes against the oppression of the rich. He justified Nazi oppression as a method of combating that oppression. Apart from that attempted justification, it was a plausible argument himself once again as a good New Dealer." But Hitler's declaration that Germany was capable of beating the world was something else. Every middle-aged citizen of Germany remembers the long grim war and final defeat which occurred the last time Germany took on the world.

Lord Lothian did not attempt to argue that the U. S. should altruistically go to Britain's aid. His argument was simply that Hitler is a threat to the U. S. and that U. S. self-interest should dictate aid to Britain. Twice repeating that the decision was up to the U. S., he practically said that on the U. S. decision depends the fate of Britain, the outcome of the war, probably the future of the U. S. and all democracy.

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