It is generally accepted axiom that the most serious movements can stand anything but ridicule. Laughter has been known to penetrate where the most fulsome oration just breezes by. It is because of this that the little ditty that follows has a significance far greater than its necessarily limited values.
As the precursor of a possible trend, and as an indication of the thinking processes of a portion of the German population, no matter how small, this little ditty that has so aroused the ire of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Nazi High Priest of propaganda, is important. Its eight lines express the doubt that must eventually, if it has not already, come to any intelligent, thinking German.
It runs:
Mighty Od in strike me dumb, Lest I into Dachau come; Make me blind so that I can
I’m fit to live in their Third Realm.
Many, and this includes the London publication Truth in its issue of May 16, believe that ditties such as these, symptomatic of the carping and criticism that has so maddened the Goebbels therein referred to, “goes far to explain his latest outburst against the Jews and Catholics and critics.”
It this be true, as it is very likely is, it is good news. For Dr. Goebbels, no matter what else you may say about him, has generally impressed observers as being the most sagacious of the Nazi chieftains. If ridicule disturbs him it may well be that his weakness has at last been discovered; that in his anger, and in his efforts to save his face, he may makes statements of irreparable damage to his Hitlerland.
Many public figures have had their careers ruined as the result of a few well-directed shafts of ridicule. The late William Jennings Bryan was for years a presidential possibility; opponents launched speech after speech against the fallacy of his philosophy. His “silver ratio” was held to be a danger to American prosperity but Mr. Bryan nevertheless remained a force in the American political scene. It wasn’t until he himself, by the very persistence of his presidential aspirations that they became the perennial candidate of his party and the joke of the vaudeville comedians, became a caricature, that his position was minimized.
More recently, and in New York, we had an example of a public figure blown up to a grotesque size and as a result retired into oblivion. His name, you may remember, was Mayor John P. O’Brien. For many eyes the Mayor, as Justice of Surrogate’s Court, was a dignified and respected figure. Elevated to the mayoralty, at a time when Tammany fortunes were at a low ebb, his every act became an inspiration for the humor of a press determined to retire Tammany from public life.
Dr. Goebbels, unfortunately for the Jews of Germany, has not yet become an analogous case. But that such a possibility exists is cause for rejoicing, since it begins to look more and more that the Jews must look to the Germans themselves for the overthrow of Hitlerism. The world, it seems, is much too tired and too depressed to fight the battle of anything but self-existence.
H.W.L.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
