HITLER A MENACE

DRIVING WOMEN BACK TO KITCHEN

German Girls Ready To Sacrifice Independence

Kirche, Kuchen und Kinder!

 Marching girls in "brown shirts"—khaki from head to foot—and a most unattractive khaki, if you can trust the opinion of Mevrow Perk—with the hakenltreuz on the arm, just like the Storm Troops themselves. Striding girls with shining eyes, more than happy, inspired by hysterical devotion to sacrifice all the dreams of the heroines of mankind, all the freedom so bitterly fought for, let it blaze in one grand bonfire of self-abnegation for the fatherland.

For Hitler, the "living saint" —they call him that!—has commanded them to cower once again before those famous "Three K's" of the Kaiser, which, when translated, mean: "Church, kitchen, and children."

Hitler says, "Back to the church; (Not the Church of the Cross, but the church of the swatika.) Back to the kitchen! Back to the children!" Good daughters of Germany will hear and obey; they are not expected to argue.

And in Germany today there are many thousands of these young women—those lithe, adoring, marching girls who have bowed to the decree. No, not bowed, exactly. The uncanny mesmerism of Adolph the Terrible has produced in them a weird exaltation. They hear the doom of women's advance and they cry: "Heil, Hitler."

Thus writes an American Journalist who recently visited Germany.

BACK TO POTS AND PANS

Hail Hitler. Coming from women whose mothers foresaw the complete emancipation of their sex, a position of world equality with man, it brings to mind the shout of the Roman gladiators:
"Hail, Caesar! We who are, about to die salute you!"

The foregoing picture of young German women leaving typewriters and looms to toddle back to pots and pans and humble service in the home, has not been taken entirely from my interview with Mevrow Perk (Mrs. E. S. Perk), recently returned to Boston from the land of the swastika. Other visitors, in recent weeks, have reported the same phenomenon.

And in this year of 1933 it is a phenomenon!

New England women, I suppose, haven't given themselves a whole lot of brain fag over handsome Adolph, except to titter when they look at his dabby moustache and to gasp with horror at the fiendish atrocities of the Nazis. They're thousands of miles from Hitler. How can he possibly mean anything in their lives?

When the more fuzzy-brained citizens of a great republic suggest that what America needs is a pep-them-up dictator (and you and I both have spinsters for a heavy tax (even spinsters with dependents), milking loans—certificates for furniture and such—to girls who'll do a walk-out on their jobs, take husbands, and go in for pot-walloping in a big way.

But, this is an, entering wedge. Openly anti-feminist, he will fight to shove women back into the state of chattel slavery into which he believes they belong. The start made, and the youth of Germany, with his "ideal" of woman, the next step, logically, will be a complete booting of women out of independence.

Mevrow Perk (Mevrow, you see, because her husband is a Hollander) smiles at the dire possibilities. She tells me that she doesn't believe it's possible, even for "Holy Adolph," to stop the advance of women.

"The world always goes forward," she said to me."Nothing stands still.
Nothing goes back. Progress has to be forward."

BACKWARD, MARCH

"But going backward is movement as well as going forward," I agreed. "And it's quite evident that Hitler is convincing women that its progress to go backward. If they believe it. it becomes so, doesn't it? Why is it impossible for women to be reduced to chattels again in the name of a finer and clearer civilization?"

Mevrow Perk admitted that she heard plenty of loose talk in Boston about the advantages of an absolute Meund-Gott regime, when life size portraits of Mussolini are to be found gracing board rooms of many corporations, and when we realize that for several years the murmur has been rising in this country that working women steal jobs from men, with many depression-goofy women joining in in the clamor for a revival of the subjection of women—it isn't particularly hard to see how the push over triumph of Hitler over German feminism threatens to turn back the American clock as well as the German.

Throughout the world today Hitler is the ogre. As a matter of record it was only the other day Al Smith blistered his "stupidity and savagery." For the savagery of the Nazis he may forever be unpopular. But it is easing of women out of employment appreciably cuts down German's male unemployment figures and brings any semblance of prosperity, ONE of Hitler's ideas, at least, may not be yowled down in derision and repugnance by the rest of the world.

THE ENTERING WEDGE

It is not even certain that woman themselves would form a united front to battle against discriminatory legislation in this country.

And yet the right to work and the right to vote are the two fundamental rights which have gradually hoisted women from the status of chattel. Any restriction of either of these rights must necessarily make her once more a two-spot in human affairs.

Hitler has opened the attack. Thus far, as Samuel Untermyer, America's distinguished lawyer and spokesman for the Jewish race, explained the other evening over the radio, he has confined himself to a labelling of women as fit only for child-bearing, for serving man, for being the ever submissive plaything of his sensual hours. He has ordered German women to give up cigarettes, lipstick, and the other surface marks of modernity. He is enticing women away from commercial work. . . It might be so. But even then she shrugged. However, Mevrow Perk is something of a fatalist. She is, of the opinion that whatever happens, the world goes on.

The growth of Hitler's new idea in America would massacre our social scheme almost beyond present-day conception. But grandma, if you ask her for the low-down, may be able to give you an idea. She will be able, perhaps, to give you a snappy picture of the days of her girlhood.

Why is it, do you think, that every family nearly, on the approach of an "interesting event" says, "I hope it's a boy."

Of course, there's the curious family pride in having a male heir to carry on the honored name of Glish. Still, I doubt if most fathers give much thought to that—the average fathers, who never get closer to fame than the telephone book. No, the hope's due to something deeper, more vital.

The world runs on food and shelter. Dollars and cents. In the old days a son was an asset; a daughter just so many pounds of red ink. Son, when he got out of his short pants, could get himself a job and contribute to the family chest. Daughter couldn't. There weren't many jobs for women then, and most of those jobs were common labor propositions.

A woman of the middle class couldn't take that kind of a job without bringing shame on herself and her people, and making the nosy neighbors say, 'tch! tch!" So she stayed at home, lived on father's bounty, until her marriage, which gave her the comfort of being her husband's servant for life.

If she didn't marry she lived in an earthly hell. Only dependents know how much of a hell dependence can be. Conscious all the time that a brother, or a nephew, or an uncle may be thinking of the cost of every slice if bread you eat. Meekly obeying all orders, so that your benefactor may not complain that you're not worth your keep.

IN EVERY MAN

Every man has the makings of a Nazi in him—if you can set fire to these makings.

The Emperor Claudius, at gladiatorial contests, liked to watch the faces of the dying. He took an artistic pleasure in observing the variations of agony. Tell that to the average man and he'll say those were different times, cruel Rome, and all that. And they used to dress men in skins of wild beasts and threw them to bulls maddened by red-hot irons.

Nero lighted his gardens by Christians burning in pitchy skirts. Sometimes it was more fun to see women hacking at each other, so they had women gladiators. One old Roman had a slave slaughtered, off hand like, just to give a yearning guest a nice, bloody show. A Roman lady took it into her head to have an unoffending slave crucified—just a little whim of the moment.

There's the mad craze behind the butcherings and beatings by the Nazis. Every man, Atwell told me, has something of the sadist in him. It's normal enough. So's masochism. Sadism is the love of inflicting pain on others. Masochism's taking pleasure in your own suffering, or enjoying fear. With the average man these primitive impulses are tightly held in restraint by inhibitions built up through the civilizing centuries.

But let them loose—as Hitler let them loose—and look out for Hell on earth!

Right here in Boston these impulses show themselves, among normal people. There's sadism and masochism combined at the auto races. There's the heart-catching thrill of imminent death, and the dizzy enjoyment of the very fear that there's going to be tragedy. When the dare-devil girl high-diver leaps from her sky-high board in flames, there's the same hope-against-hope thrill. When you plunge through the most frightening twist of the roller coaster you're enjoying your own fear.

In small doses, all this is normal enough. But when it runs wild— Well, in America, at present it means a vacation at the Psychopatic. In Germany it means that you stand on the street corner with your arm raised in salute and cry "Heil Hitler!"

FURY OF THE MOB

But how can a man like Hitler turn hundreds of thousands of humans into demons?

Nietzsche, the mad philosopher, urged: "Thou art going to women? Forget not the whip."

It's the beat of an idea, reiterated. It's the psychology of the mob. It's the never-veering positiveness of a wild leader. It's getting on the band waggon and shouting hurray Hitler, to push his followers into joyous participation in excesses, merely has to keep one step ahead of them, show initiative always.

"Look in at a meeting of stock holders of some corporation some time," Atwell suggested. "Watch what happens when the chairman particularly wants some motion passed. As soon as he reads it, he asks for a show of hands by all in favor, and instantly flashes his own hand up. Instinctively other hands start up— and often go up."

Americans have, no especially smug call to believe that, if by some incredible misfortune Hitlerism should furrow into our country, we should not have plenty of cruelties take place. A cult of cruelty is building up plenty fast right now.

The other day in a Boston theatre I saw a newsreel of a hacked man being dragged through the living streets of hate in Havana. The same reel showed a man, hounded to death by the infuriated mob, stumbling over the balcony of his house in a paroxysm of terror while his killers chased him snarling. A few days later I saw another newsreel showing Di Pinedo's plane cracking up and roaring into flames, with a close-up of his fire-thwarted mechanic sobbing in near delirium.

A few years, ago neither of these clips would have got into a projector. I don't know whether they would have been censored or not— I think they would have been—but I do know that it was considered best policy not to show actual death gruesomely. Public reaction was feared.

But now those hacked Cubans are just a thrill, dramatic movie. The flaming of Di Pinedo's plane drew gasps of horror; from the audience, but they enjoyed the fearsome
shock.

In New York they're showing a movie called —with the subtitle, "The Killer who Chuckles over Death." And a recent book review says: "For those who like strong stuff this is an exciting piece of contemporary naturalism, in which blood, lust, torture, agony and violent death follow one another by turns . . . In Book Two a helpless man is beaten up in a police inspector's office . . . There is a seduction scene. And a suicide and a couple of shootings complete the carnage . . . Throughout the book almost all imaginable states are described in a language that is as frank as possible.

SPOKE TOO SOON

Nevertheless, of course, the Boston woman —and the Boston man— will shake their heads, smiling in ridicule, perhaps, at the notion that anything as cruel and stupid as Hitlerism could wreak chaos on a nation where citizens are so proud of their freedom as in the United States.

Well, take a look at what Genevieve Parkhurst, famous student of the woman's movement, said just a few years back—in 1930 — after a trip to Germany :—

"They have a power which is by no means second to that of man. They are fulfilling all the promises which the women of other countries made when they pleaded for the vote and have yet failed to keep. They have made Germany a better world to live in. They stand firm together as women, bulwark of unity, against all attempts at chicanery or charlatanism in government or politics. Their men acknowledge their power and dare not try to thwart it."

The German women were hard and purposeful, she said. The women of America were soft. The pioneering days were far behind, and since those days American women had not had to fight for sustenance. As a real power in the nation's politics, American women were so many ciphers.

It's ironical to think of the switch that time has brought. Hitler has squashed the woman's movement, while in this country many of the ladies hold important government jobs, while one, Frances Perkins, is a member of the Cabinet.

"Under Hitler women are put back 100 years!" one sad-eyed German feminist complains.

And German women, three years ago, were a "bulwark against chicanery and charlatanism." Now they cry, "Heil Hitler!" It's the younger ones, though, who adore him. Their elders see the newly-built civilization crashing about them.

CENTURIES OF SLAVERY

Fifteen hundred years ago, or thereabouts, the women of Rome achieved freedom. And it wasn't small-time stuff. Rome was no trifling ancient-history state, but a greater nation, both in power and comparative area than any nation since have been. Women owned property. Women could divorce undesirable husbands. Then their freedom slipped away from them, and women, until his century was owned by man as slave.

Charles Atwell of the Psychopathic, interested in the baffling twistings of the feminine mind, declares religion did it. Religion lifted woman to the pedestal, made her a gentle meek homebody, and it took fiery-eyed suffragettes to knock her down and make her a person again.

The economic situation now threatens to slip over what religious fervor did centuries ago. Women can choose between independence and men out of work or dependence and men with jobs. For Hitler it's a lot easier than trying to figure out how both sexes can have jobs. Eager to immolate themselves in the cause of "Hitler the Holy" the women—the younger chits—dash to do his bidding. The feminist—it's what they're saying—becomes old-fashioned; the old-fashioned woman, sitting by the fire and meekly obeying her lord and master, becomes the glorious ideal of "advanced womanhood."

EDUCATION FOR GIRLS

The original English colonists, Dean Archer told me, brought to America the old world idea that woman was made to be a sort of domestic drudge to minister to the will and pleasure of man, and that marriage was her only reputable vocation. The education of women was frowned upon. Even in New England, where a school for boys was one of the first thoughts of every newly-established community, there was no provision in such schools for giving girls general idea of what it was all about.

"But New England fathers were not utterly unmindful of the intellectual welfare of their daughters, so we find them apologetically and perhaps furtively arranging to have their daughters attend what were known as 'Dames' Schools,' kept, no doubt, by a spinster or widow. The Quakers, with their alarming ideas of equality of the sexes, where apparently the first to open the doors of their schools to children of both sexes. This was in Philadelphia in 1689, but hard-headed colonists everywhere frowned on the idea.

"It is a singular fact that society in general is so largely governed by age-old prejudices, a custom, whether it be of slavery, polygamy, a caste system of special privileges, or what not is blindly adhere to and will be defended to the death by supposedly intelligent people.

"This truth was strikingly manifested in the long contest for education of women. One of the first communities in the United States, perhaps the first to throw open its grammar schools to girls, was Dorchester. This took place in 174, and then only from June 6 to October 1 of each year—presumably during the summer vacation. Five years later Boston took the radical step of admitting girls to its grammar schools on the same footing as boys."

PIONEER NEW ENGLAND

New England, I think, should be sharply on guard against any attempt such as Hitler's, to smash back the advance of women. New England has always been a pioneer for freedom— a hater of slavery. New England women have dared demand in loud voice what other women have been too timid to ask in whisper. Higher education for women got its great start here and amongst our greatest assets are our colleges for women—Mt. Holyoke, the first women's college in the State. Smith, Wellesley, Radcliffe, Jackson, Simmons and co-educational Boston University.

It is impossible to believe that a modern triumph of the Kaiser's "Three K's" now demanded by Adolph Hitler, can come to pass and the education of women survive. Back to the kitchen here, and it's next to a sure thing that beautiful Tower Court at Wellesley could be turned over to a detachment of a dictator's army to be scarred as storm troop barracks — either by dictatorial command or by an economic necessity that would force a college to close its doors.

There's nothing in "education for culture." Not a thing—as yet, anyhow. We educate for profit. We send girls to high schools, our young women to colleges; give them a decent hand-out of what they'll need to take their place in the world of dollars and cents and devil take the hindmost.

Culture's a nice word. But an ermine wrap is a lot cheaper.

Gilgandra Weekly and Castlereagh (NSW : 1929 - 1942), Thursday 30 August 1934, page 10