It was the turn of No. 3 Nazi Goebbels to enjoy his personal triumph in Vienna Lat week, following those of No. 2 Nazi Göring and No. 1 Nazi Hitler. Arrests were reported to have reached a total of 34,000 in Vienna alone. The day by day suicide rate continued to climb 102, 112, 132. . . .
Orating to 25,000 Viennese who cheered him to the echo Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, the exultant Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment of Greater Germany, cried: "The number of suicides in Vienna remains the same; the difference is that, whereas before Germans committed suicide, it is now Jews! . . . I know some say 'the Jew also is a human being.' Just that word 'also' is the best indication of what the Jew really is! ... Our racial theory is the sole basis for the correct solution of the Jewish problem. . . .
"We are no barbarians! Who invented and still employs the guillotine? [Cries of "Die Franzosen!" (The French!)] Who exterminated whole social classes? [Cries of "Die Bolschewiken!" (The Bolsheviks!)] ... It is stupid to say 'Hitler means war.' . . . He tore the Treaty of Versailles to pieces and threw them in the faces of its beneficiaries. By so doing war was avoided! . . .
"There have been two occasions in which Germany feared France. One was at the time of the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the other on the occasion of the official proclamation announcing Germany's rearmament. I can admit quite frankly today that . . . The Führer and we all were in fear and anxiety then. Today those fears have passed! There can no longer be any question of a 'promenade' from Paris to Berlin. That was once— but will never be again!
"Our critics are morbid, degenerate, democratic intellectuals—relics of the 19th Century!" concluded the Minister for Public Enlightenment. "They are dead, they are unable to act!"
"Like a Dream," Same day at London the House of Lords raised a remarkable chorus of assent to the Nazification of Austria. The Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England read to Their Lordships a letter he said he had just received from a very eminent Viennese artist who described the events in Austria as "a sudden salvation, which seemed to us like a dream."
"The gratitude of Europe and the gratitude of the whole world is due at this time, in my opinion, to Hitler!" cried Lord Redesdale, to whom Lord Cecil dryly rejoined, ''If Lord Redesdale happened to be a Liberal, a Roman Catholic or a Jew in Austria, I very much doubt if he would talk so."
The former Labor Peer Lord Ponsonby, who made his political career as a champion of the League of Nations, before that was a Court page to Queen Victoria and today is a Government supporter, appeared to echo the sentiments of most of Their Lordships when he keynoted: "Nobody in this country can have any enthusiasm for a war to aid Czechoslovakia!"