Foreign News: Exclusive Property

All Christian churches in Germany have taken such a beating from the Nazi regime in 1937 that good Nazi adherents had begun to wonder whether it would be politically safe this year for them to celebrate Christmas. Taking up this vital question, Das Schwarze Korps, organ of Adolf Hitler's black-uniformed Special Guard, which consistently baits Jews, Catholics, Protestants, last week assured Germans that they might observe Christmas without being guilty of "unGerman practices," It asserted: "Christmas is no intellectual property of the Christian confessions. They simply borrowed it without asking permission. . . . This holiday is the exclusive property of Germans!"

To save this exclusive German property Das Schwarze Korps also came out against those Nazis who wish to displace Christmas with a pagan winter festival and to substitute Balder for Christ. Balder, God of Light in Norse mythology, was invulnerable to everything except mistletoe. The God of Evil, Loki, Balder's enemy, found out his secret, persuaded the blind god Hoder to kill Balder by throwing a sprig of mistletoe at him.

Last week Christ also was pictured in a Nazi role by Germany's No. i Jew-baiter, Julius Streicher. Bullet-headed Streicher, through nimble feats of exegesis, has long since asserted that the central doctrine of Christianity is anti-Semitism and that Christ came to the earth to save the world from the Jews. Attacking a recent speech against anti-Semitism by pompous little Bishop William Thomas Manning of New York, Streicher's organ Der Sturmer declared: "If Christ were again to come to earth and heard Bishop Manning he would say 'this Bishop Manning is an ally of Jews. He is a pseudo-priest, a wolf in sheep's clothing and a twofold child of hell.' That is what Christ would say and he would take a whip and drive Bishop Manning from the temple."