Foreign News: Sensitive Nazis

Nazi journalists behaved like badly spoiled, ill-tempered and sulky brats last week at London and Brussels. At London, they boycotted Prime Minister Chamberlain's speech. At Lima, five German correspondents stalked out of a committee session in a huff when Dantes Bellegarde, Haitian delegate, declared that the Americas could not "possibly have anything in common with a nation that had reverted to customs of the Middle Ages."

At Brussels, the German Ambassador refused to allow an Austrian singer and two German dancers to entertain the Foreign Press Association at its dinner until assurance had been given that Nazi newspapermen would not be humiliated by having to listen to Josef Schmidt, German-Jewish tenor, sing in German. Instead, Tenor Schmidt sang songs in French, Rumanian — and Italian — which made the Italian press attaché hopping mad.

Most pointed gibes at Nazi Germany were made at the Anglo-American Press Association's annual dinner in Paris last week. A playlet depicted an imaginary second Munich conference at which Mr. Chamberlain, who had just promised Chancellor Hitler "all of Africa by 2 p. m. next Saturday," asked: "What would you have said, Adolf, if I had answered 'No' when you asked for the Sudetenland?" The German Chancellor wept into his sleeve, replied: "Ach, Mr. Chamberlain. You wouldn't have been an English gentleman."