Mississippi Frontier

Somewhere behind the German lines, in a house on whose walls hung quaint pictures of Belgian and French beauties of days gone by, German-American Hearst Writer Karl H. von Wiegand waited one day last week for Hitler. Around him, like suspicious police dogs, gathered the familiar assistants of a Hitler interview: Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, Ribbentrop's Lawyer Hewel, Chief of the Propaganda Ministry's Press Bureau Dr. Dietrich, Foreign Office Interpreter Schmidt.

Old war-chasing Karl von Wiegand hoped for a scoop. In 1914 he was rebuked by U. P. for wasting money on a 138-word cablegram--on Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia. Later he had something to say on behalf of Italy in Ethiopia, Japan in China, the Rebels in Spain. He hoped last week that nearly victorious Hitler would have something sensational to say to the U. S.

Suddenly a six-wheeled military car dashed up. Adolf Hitler got down from beside the chauffeur. Salutes flashed, heels clicked. The "interview" began: it was a harangue. Brandishing papers on which he had jotted notes in answer to prepared questions, Hitler screamed at Wiegand:

"At no time has Germany had any territorial or political interest in the American continent. Nor has Germany any such interest now. Whoever states anything to the contrary is lying deliberately for some purpose. . . .

"America's intervention in the European war in the way of mass deliveries of aircraft and other war materials cannot affect the outcome of this conflict. . . . Our opponents are going to lose the war because their military organizations are bad, their leadership worse and their conduct of the war, in many instances, disastrous. . . .

"If, as has been the case, a British Cabinet Minister declares that England's frontier is the Rhine, this is really the limit both as regards stupidity and unbearable arrogance. It could hardly be more stupid to declare that Germany's frontier is the Mississippi,* or the Amazon, or the Yangtze. . . .

"This so-called 'fifth column' conveys nothing to me because it doesn't exist except in the imagination of fantastic minds or as a phantom created by unscrupulous propaganda for obvious purposes. Incompetent governments drive their peoples into war, and when they pitiably collapse, it is understandable that they prefer to shift the responsibility elsewhere.

"Therefore, I say, America for Americans, Europe for Europeans."

Hearstpapers handled the Wiegand piece with care, and played its headlines way down. Unspectacular also -- but devastating -- was the press conference comment of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "That brings recollections." -- e.g., unwanted Austria, disclaimed Sudetenland, renounced Bohemia, Moravia, useless Memel, undesired Poland.

Frankly amorous waxed Das Schwarze Korps, newspaper of Heinrich Himmler's Elite Guard. The paper invited the U. S. to join the "new strong powers," presumably sit by while Germany licks Europe, and afterward easily and gently seize Canada, Bermuda, the Bahamas, other Imperial leftovers. With Teuton historicity, Das Schwarze Korps recalled such German friends of the U.S. as Baron Frederick William Augustus Henry Ferdinand yon Steuben, who assisted in the Revolution as a topnotch troop-trainer (but who, the paper neglected to mention, had been persuaded to help the U. S. by a Frenchman); and General Carl Schurz, a pillar of the Republican Party in Lincoln's years (who incidentally had been exiled from Germany).

"America," concluded the article in a burst of eloquence, "would be underestimating her own power of rejuvenation, if, by persisting in becoming encrusted in outworn prejudices, by allowing herself to be influenced by foreign suggestions, she should start on a course toward a foreign political goal, fundamentally foreign to her nature as well as being harmful, and one that once already turned out to be detrimental to her interests, one that today would mean that against her own interests she would be betting on the wrong horse."

*Nazi fifth columnists in Bogota last week distributed handbills telling Colombians that if that country abandoned the U. S. in favor of the Axis powers, Germany would give Colombia the Panama Canal.

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