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Pacifist Charlatan? Continued the reporter de luxe: "I told him we French wanted assurance of his sincerity. He said: France will do well to reflect on my offers of understanding. Never has the head of Germany made such offers or so often repeated them. And from whom come these offers? From a pacifist charlatan who made a specialty of international relations? By no means. But from the greatest nationalist Germany ever had at its head!
"For I can bring you what no other could ever have brought you: an entente which will be approved by 90% of the German nation, the nine-tenths who follow me. I pray you note this: There are in the life of peoples decisive occasions. France can today, if it wishes, put an end forever to the 'German Peril' which your children from generation to generation have learned to fear. You can remove this formidable mortgage which weighs on the history of France. This chance is now given to you. If you don't seize it, think of your responsibilities before your children. You have before you a Germany, nine-tenths of which has complete confidence in its chief, and its chief says to you, 'Let's be friends.'"
Significance & Suppression. Thus Adolf Hitler in the same breath declared that he does not retract one word of his domestic incitements to Germans to crush and conquer France and yet spoke as though he had made specific offers to France looking toward eternal amity. If any such offers have been made, the French Foreign Office and the Berlin Embassy of France have never disclosed what they are and neither has Adolf Hitler. The half-amazed, half-angry reaction of the Paris Cabinet last week was to inform the world press that Ambassador André François-Poncet will be ordered to call upon Foreign Minister Constantin von Neurath at the earliest possible moment and ask what the German Government does propose.
Meanwhile in France where the Press normally enjoys a freedom approximating liberty to libel and tempered only by the readiness of its editors to shut up if offered adequate bribes, the Government leaned over backward in solicitude for the feelings of Adolf Hitler. The Sarraut Cabinet drew a storm of French abuse upon itself by ordering gendarmes to raid the offices of Paris' potent Le Journal and seize all copies of its Sunday feature-smash entitled ''Hitler's Secret Loves'" as well as the German research material upon which this was based.
Instantly upon the neck of Premier Sarraut jumped the vast majority of French newsorgans represented by the National Newspaper Federation. He and his Cabinet were accused of ''taking orders from the German Embassy." This raised the issue of freedom of the Press in France to its maximum power. Very tamely indeed Le Journal's revelations coupled Adolf Hitler's name with Jenny Hang, his chauffeur's sister; Erna Hanfstaengl, sister of his friend "Putzy"; Frau Winifred Wagner, widowed daughter-in-law of the composer; Margaret Slezak, daughter of a Viennese tenor; the Realmleader's late niece Greta Granbald; and the German cinema's lithe-limbed Leni Riefenstahl, who was quoted as having said with utmost respect of Adolf Hitler, "The Realmleader could not love except platonically." (TIME, Feb. 17.)