HITLER'S POPULARITY IS EXPLAINED BY KOTSCHNIG

"In Germany the masses of the people accepted the Versailles Treaty without knowing that their armies had been defeated in the World War," asserted Dr. Walter Kotschnig, secretary of the International Students' Service, in a speech sponsored by the Foreign Students' Committee last night. "This was one of three factors that have resulted in Hitler's rise to power. The masses received that treaty in the belief that they were still the greatest military power in the world.

"The same men who made the Versailles Treaty made the Weimar Constitution, and in the minds of the German people the two are inseparably connected.

"Secondly," Dr. Kotschnig pointed out, "the Weimar Constitution was as nearly perfect as any outline of government has ever been, but it was utterly unfitted to the German nation. The idea of democracy never caught the German imagination.

"The final factor is Hitler's personality. When Hitler speaks it is like a wireless station receiving ideas and then rebroadcasting them: the opinions of the masses seem to rise to him, he catches them, and repeats them to his listeners.