Hitler Talks of Time

For the fourth time since World War II began, Adolf Hitler summoned his Reichstag into session in the Kroll Opera House this week to hear him report on the war's progress. Though the British knew he would be there, no bombs fell on Berlin that day. The Fuehrer was in good form. He spoke seriously, with less virulence than usual, and his tone was one of confidence. For the German people his speech was a good bucker-up, if they needed one; for foreigners it was good propaganda.

Herr Hitler spoke of time and the might of Germany. It was an hour before President Roosevelt declared that the U.S. was ready to fight for democracy (see p. 13), but Hitler spoke one long sentence that sounded as if he already knew what Franklin Roosevelt would say: "When today the democratic agitators of a country to which the German people have never done any harm . . . threaten to choke the National Socialist people's State . . . with the force of their capitalistic system and of their material production, then there can be only one answer: the German people will never again experience such a year as 1918, but will rise to still higher achievements in all branches of national resistance."

It was this force of U.S. resources and production that Adolf Hitler called on his people to face. For the first time he told them that the war might last beyond 1941. "If the German soldier already possesses the best weapons in the world, he will receive still better ones this year and next. . . . We are all obliged to assure that the lead which we now possess does not become smaller but rather increasingly bigger. This is not a problem of capital, but exclusively a problem of work. . . . Neither force of arms nor time will ever make us yield."

Time, for a while, was on Hitler's side, and last week he hurried time. Not only in the Near East (see p. 28) and in North Africa (see p. 37) did he press his advantage, but he put such pressure on the Government of old Marshal Petain that France expected to hear any day that it was committed to all-out collaboration. Spain took a cautious step and assumed control of customs at once international Tangier, across the Strait from Gibraltar. Portugal was in terror of invasion, expected a grab at the Azores and Cape Verde Islands.

Adolf Hitler had thrown down his challenge to the U.S. in the field in which the U.S. has for generations considered itself supreme: the field of production and work. If U.S. citizens thought he would give them time to make haste slowly, they were deluding themselves. This week Canada's Defense Minister J. L. Ralston spoke some straight words to visiting U.S. Rotarians. Said he: "Our most dangerous enemy on this side of the Atlantic is the idea that we have plenty of time."

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