Assaults and Indignities

Jewelers and novelty shops all over the Reich did a brisk business last week selling lapel pins enameled or embossed with foreign flags. In many cases the pins doubtless worked, saved their wearers from instant Nazi assault for failure to salute passing Storm Troop banners. But one day last week in the smoky Ruhr metropolis of Dusseldorf, inoffensive Roland Velz, a U. S. citizen and superintendent of a group of Germany's Woolworth stores, went walking, pinless, with his wife. Cheering Dusseldorfers stood massed along the curbstone six deep as a Storm Battalion marched past, grim-faced with blaring horns and throbbing drums. Mr. & Mrs. Velz, as they edged down the sidewalk behind the packed standees failed to salute the Storm Troop's swastika flag. Smack!--a uniformed Nazi edging the other way down the sidewalk bashed Mr. Velz on the mouth. Smack!--he bashed him again. U. S. Citizen Velz's lips and nose gushed blood. Spying a policeman, Mr. Velz cried, "Arrest this man--he hit me!" "You can appeal, if you like," shrugged the policeman, "to our police lieutenant on the corner." "Herr Leutnant!" spluttered Mr. Velz, but the officer cut him short. "You did not salute the flag? It is always advisable to give the Nazi salute. Raise your arm, like this--so!--and you will be all right." In no mood to practice Nazi salutes, bleeding Citizen Velz rushed off to the U. S. consulate in Berlin, swore to the facts of his bashing and waited to see what action would be taken by that detached, God-fearing Baptist, U. S. Ambassador William Edward Dodd. Contemplative Professor Dodd has written for a recent issue of The Uni-versity of Chicago Magazine a characteristic piece headed "The Education of an Ambassador." "Into this quiet life," he writes, "came the call of President Roosevelt of June 8 to go as envoy to Germany in the hope of improving the relations of the two countries. I hesitated and took counsel with the University authorities only to accept." Ever since he reached Berlin last July, Ambassador Dodd has been taking counsel with the State Department about assaults and indignities meted out to U. S. citizens in Germany by Nazis. Last week the Professor had collected a fistful of 27 affidavits, had received numerous evasive apologies from the German Foreign Office, knew of only one case in which a Nazi assailant had been punished (by a fine of 50 marks. $17.50). The Velz case in Dusseldorf last week decided Secretary of State Cordell Hull to instruct Professor Dodd to go the limit in demanding satisfaction. To back him up with the potent push of U. S. public opinion, excerpts were published from all 27 affidavits, 19 of them assaults. It was revealed that three days after President Roosevelt's inauguration a U. S. citizen, Mrs. Max Schussler, was molested in her Berlin home by Storm Troopers who forced her to stand naked at pistol point while they browbeat her husband into signing some papers.

Secretary Hull's instructions reached Ambassador Dodd shortly before he rose in Berlin to read to a luncheon attended by such high German officials as Reichsbank Governor Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, a rambling speech in which he declared (with or without reference to Chancellor Adolf Hitler's lack of even high school education): "Half-educated statesmen of today . . . think they can find salvation for their troubled fellows in the arbitrary modes of the man who fell an easy victim to the lewd Cleopatra. They forget that . . . the Caesars succeeded only for a short history." time as measured by the tests of Nazis were incensed at what they considered a slur upon their Caesar -- Adolf Hitler -- but Ambassador Dodd blandly pursued next day his instructions to battle for the rights of U. S. citizens in Germany with cool, aristocratic Foreign Minister Baron von Neurath. The Baron, who had given the Professor an appointment at 11:30 a. m.. put him off hour after hour until Ambassador Dodd had sat fuming in his Embassy all day, acutely conscious that Foreign Minister von Neurath had found time to attend a purely social luncheon for the Chilean Ambassador to Great Britain. When he finally received the Professor, the Baron apologized, suavely renewed assurances, which he has often given before, that nothing would be left undone to protect U. S. citizens in Germany. Next day two Storm Troopers were arrested in Dusseldorf, charged with assaulting Citizen Velz. They were rushed through a "speed court," sentenced to six months in prison. Exulted the U. S. Embassy: "Well, that's getting action. . . . This looks like the turning point."

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