combine
propaganda and espionage, frequently using the propaganda
organizations as the bases for espionage. In the United States, so far
as I have been able to ascertain, agents of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis
are just beginning to cooperate. In the Central and South American
countries, however, the axis has apparently agreed to a division of
labor, each of the fascist powers assuming a specific field of
activity.

Germany, Italy and Japan have already shown the extent to which they
will go in their drive for raw materials vital to their industries and
war machines. In Spain, the German and Italian Fifth Column organized
and fomented a bloody civil war in order to establish a wide fascist
area to the south of France, for Germany and Italy, of course,
consider France a potential enemy in the next war. In France itself,
German and Italian agents, aided by their Governments, built an
amazing network of steel and concrete fortifications manned by at
least 100,000 heavily armed men--all this before France awoke to the
treason within her own borders.

The strategy pursued by the Fifth Column in different countries falls
into like patterns. In Austria, before it was swallowed, Nazi agents
first established propaganda organizations as the bases from which to
work. When, after the abortive attempt to seize the Austrian
Government, the Nazis were made illegal, they went underground but
continued to get aid from Germany. Eventually Berlin ordered
_Standarte II_ organized as a specific body prepared to provoke
disturbances. When the Austrian police quelled them, the provocations
enabled Germany to protest that German citizens were being attacked
and mistreated. The activities of _Standarte II_, directed by the
Gestapo, continued with increasing intensity until the unfortunate
country was absorbed.

In Czechoslovakia the same strategy was followed: first the
establishment of propaganda centers to which Nazis and Nazi
sympathizers could gravitate--under the cloak of bodies seeking to
improve relations between the Sudeten Germans and the Czech
Government; then the utilization of propaganda headquarters and
branches as centers for espionage. Shortly before the Munich Pact,
_Standarte II_ again came into being, creating disorders which, when
Czech police tried to suppress them, enabled Germany to raise the cry
that Czech subjects of German blood were being cruelly mistreated.

Invariably the aggressor nation raises a moral issue to