<p>"Polish regular officers fired on our territory. Since 5:45 a.m. we have been returning the fire."</p>
<p>IT WAS a particularly contemptible case of vice paying homage to virtue when Hitler spoke those words -- "returning fire," indeed -- in the first hours of the Second World War. But the virtue -- having a casus belli before going to war -- is so universally acknowledged that even Hitler paid homage to it. Immediately before Hitler attacked Poland, the SS staged a provocation -- a "Polish" attack on a German radio station near Poland's border, a sham that included corpses of German "victims" -- actually, concentration camp inmates shot by the SS.</p>