GERMANY: In Check

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Neville Chamberlain invited himself to the conferences culminating at Munich, and took great pride in having preserved "peace in our time." But Nazis never thanked him for handing them Czechoslovakia on a platter. Instead, they have poured hatred on his head. Last week came the unkindest cut of Nazi ingratitude. Supersoapboxing Propaganda Minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels addressed a meeting of 15,000 students and workers in Berlin's vast Sportspalast after the news had been broken that, since the Polish Government has banned seasonal emigration of farm hands into Germany, German students will be drafted to work on Reich farms this summer.

To offset this unpleasant fact Dr. Goebbels denounced "intellectuals" who "constantly nagged" the Nazi Government during the Czech crisis and asked: What would have happened had Neville Chamberlain not come to Munich? Dr. Goebbels roared: "I say he came because he had to come. He came because we had him so cornered that he was—to use a chess term—in check."

Youthful Nazis giggled and cheered.

"When the democracies accuse us of lack of political morality, it is because they have history behind them while we stand before ours—and youth is usually more immoral than old age. An old proverb says that the worst prostitutes become the most devout deaconesses in old age—and it is the same way in politics."

"You need have no anxiety for the fate of your city," Dr. Goebbels shouted to Nazis at the windup of Danzig's German Culture Week. Hotheads were disappointed that he set no immediate date for Danzig's return to the Reich, talked about "German Culture." Many Danzig citizens preferred to spend the hot sunny day at the Baltic beaches, leaving the still Free City to a sudden influx of thousands of Nazi and Polish tourists, who keep a sharp eye on each other's movements.