Defense Minister

Most gratifying to sound, representative Germans was the appointment, last week, of General Wilhelm Groener to be Minister of Defense, succeeding famed Dr. Otto Gessler, who held that post for seven years prior to his recent retirement (TIME, Jan. 23).

Defense Minister Groener originally won fame, just after the armistice, by stepping resolutely into the post left vacant by General Erich Ludendorff, when that great neurasthenic fled in disguise to Sweden. It was Groener who ably and steadfastly assisted Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg to hustle home the huge, defeated German armies in safety and good order.

True and yet with the force of a legend is the story of how blunt General Groener dared to tell Wilhelm II., in the last days of the war, that the Emperor ought to go in person into the battle areas and either rally his troops for a last effort or die in the attempt, "fighting as would become Your Majesty."

As the new Minister assumed office, last week, Chancellor Wilhelm Marx cleared up an old, so-called scandal involving the Defense Ministry by bluntly stating that in 1926 it sank large secret funds in defending the cinema industries of the Reich from U. S. competition. Although this involved a very wide interpretation of the Defense Ministry's duties, Chancellor Marx challenged critics to deny that German cinema firms were being rapidly swamped by U. S. competition at the time when they were assisted by the secret funds.