Enlightened Germans

The German reader today is the best-informed newspaper reader in the world. . . . The German press, of course, does not publish indiscriminately all the lies and reports cooked up by hostile propaganda. . . . We are not rushing the German newspaper reader from one nerve-racking sensation to another, we are not subjecting him to every stupid political gossip coming from the mouth of some hysterical person or from the pen of our enemies. . . .

Before and behind our armament of steel and concrete rises the spiritual armament of our people. It protects us against offensives in the realm of mind. . . .

For all the sense these words (uttered last week by Dr. Otto Dietrich, head of Germany's press department) made to a citizen of the U. S., they might have been the product of another system of communication, like the lowing of cattle or the twittering of birds, not merely another language.

In Germany last week there was no such thing as news, as U. S. editors understand it. Informed the German people might be, but what they swallowed was a carefully winnowed, ground, boiled, predigested gruel, designed to nourish but not invigorate their minds. The Nazi press was free from "foreign lies," free to support the Reich's worldwide program of expansion--but not free to publish what it pleased.

As if to underline Dr. Dietrich's concept of information, in Muenister last week Dr. Joseph Goeebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment & Propaganda, told the world what Germany expects of the press in neutral countries. Said he: "Even in neutral States the precepts of freedom of opinion must not be misused ... to insult the warring powers. ..." "It is not enough," cried Dr. Goeebbels, "for the government of a neutral country to proclaim its neutral attitude . . . while public opinion has the freedom to insult! . . ." Meanwhile, German newspapers bristled with angry editorials attacking the Swiss press, which had referred to Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland as countries "occupied by Germany." Dr. Goeebbels' editors reminded Switzerland that it was a small country and would do well to curb any unfriendly opinions in its press.

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