The Wilmington Morning Star

Editorial Comment

LIDICE THE IMMORTAL

New York Times

The Bohemian town of Lidice has been "leveled to the ground and the name of the community extinguished." This action was taken after all the men in the town had been shot, all the women placed in concentration camps, all the children sent to "educational institutions" -which is the Nazi term for propaganda schools, where an effort will be made to teach them to admire those who murdered their fathers and abused their mothers. This murder, this rape, this kidnapping is part of the Nazi revenge for the death of the Nazi butcher, Reinhard Heydrich. The story was not invented by Hitler's enemies. It was proudly proclaimed by the Berlin radio.

Isn't it about time to define what we mean by a "just peace" with Germany? The town of Lidice, a poor, coal-mining village, was near Kladno. Are the citizens of that community to determine what is "just"? The answer is, they are. It is they who will arise when the great Nazi retreat begins, from behind every tree and every ruined wall; they who will say that the beaten and broken Nazi thugs shall have no water, no food and no truce; they who will insist that no mountain, no valley, no depth of the sea, no island shall save the guilty from retribution; they who will avenge Lidice. We, who are not yet caught closely in this fearful struggle, had best not try to subdue the passions of those of our allies who have lived with the Nazi beast. Let them first be satisfied. In grief and agony they have earned the right. After that we can help to write the peace.

The name of Lidice extinguished? The name goes round the world. It is written in blood in every free man's atlas. It blazes in undying fire on every map of Europe. What happened there will never be forgiven, never forgotten.

If there was in any honest mind a rag, a shred of compromise, there in that martyred, glorious town-where all the men died because none could be found to denounce the "guilty"-it burned to ashes.