Complications

While Berliners were free to make merry all night long in the city's pleasure spots last week because the police had neglected to re-enact the curfew law, Germany's political aspect became even more complex. Observers pondered the following puzzling developments:

P: Old President Paul von Hindenburg went to Dietramszell, Bavaria, to shoot at chamois. Attired in mackintosh and with a gemsbart (chamois mane) stuck jauntily behind his green hunting hat, he was delighted when he brought down a buck. Not so delighted was he to learn that the Bavarian cabinet of Minister President Dr. Heinrich Held, who has been in office since 1924, had resigned after having failed to effect a higher slaughter tax. The bill would have added $2.000.000 annually to Bavaria's income by imposing a tax on all cattle butchered. There seemed to be little reason to believe that the Socialists could form a cabinet in their allotted ten days.

P: In Munich the constabulary forbade serving beer at political rallies because fortnight ago a beer mug barrage broke up a Fascist-Socialist meeting there.

P: The German Foreign Office branded as "arrant nonsense" the report that Germany would seek revision of the Versailles Treaty at the September meeting of the League of Nations. Such rumors were the fruit of a speech made fortnight ago by Gottfried R. Treviranus, Minister for Occupied Territories, who--campaigning for the newly-formed Conservative People's Party--intimated that the Fatherland still had a hungry eye on that part of East Prussia which is now the Polish Corridor (TIME, Aug. 25).

P: It was officially denied that President von Hindenburg would take any part in the coming general elections, that he had agreed to meet and enter into a political deal with Adolf Hitler, Fascist demagog.

In spite of the denial, Welt am Abend (Communist organ) persisted in circulating as valid news coming "from a highly placed authority" the report that Old Paul was secretly forming a militaristic cabal, which would permanently dissolve the Reichstag, erect a formal dictatorship.

P: The Vossische Zeituag announced that General Wilhelm Heye of the Reichswehr (standing army) would resign his office after the election. Named as his possible successor was General Kurt von Hammerstein, who was seized as a Republican sympathizer in 1920 on the eve of the Kapp putsch (revolution). General Hans von Seeckt, who organized the Reichswehr so efficiently that Allied influence urged his retirement, made his political debut by accepting the new Conservative People's Party nomination for the Reichstag in the constituency of Magdeburg-Anhalt.

P: Two moves were made toward consolidating Germany's 3O-odd political factions into fewer, larger, more practical groups. The Conservative People's Party and the Economic party issued a joint election platform. Reactionaries in these groups, however, promptly formed another organization known as the Constitutional party, sought to restrain the three-weeks-old Staatspartei (Constitutional party) from using their name.

P:. To discourage small cliques, the Cabinet considered a bill which would require each Reichstag deputy to poll at least 70,000 votes. Present requirement is 60,000 votes. The bill, however, cannot be considered until the Reichstag is again convened.

*Composed of anti-Hindenburg elements & not the National People's Party.

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