Peace

An emissary went to Adolf Hitler last week, presented the compliments of Lutheran Archbishop Erling Eidem of Sweden and told the Chancellor: "The persecution and dismissal of opposition pastors from the German Evangelical Church is a disgrace to Germany." Touched on a tender spot, Herr Hitler roared at his Reich Bishop, shaven-headed Ludwig Mueller: "There must be peace in the German Protestant Church by May 1." Reich Bishop Mueller roared at the pastors: "There must be peace." "Peace," echoed the pastors, for whom religion in Germany was less than ever a thing of peace last week.

On Good Friday the Reich Bishop offered those pastors who rebelled at the imposition of Nazidom upon their church an iron olive branch: "I admonish them to abandon their perverted craving for martyrdom and submit as a Christian duty. Govern the tongue, that unruly member. The church conflict has filled the mass of our people with astonishment, scorn and bitterness, for they cannot understand why pastors should quarrel. Nothing cures the itch for church politics like a visit to the sick."

Why Protestant pastors quarrel with Nazidom was set forth last week in the trial at Darmstadt of 29 members of a sect called Ernst Bibelforscher (Earnest Bible Searchers). Their crime was that they take orders only from God, believe that all man-made laws and governments are the work of Satan. In this they include the Nazi State. Police told them months ago to disband. They did not. They were arrested. But their treason was so huge and vague that even Nazi law could not touch them and they were acquitted.

Why Catholic priests quarrel with Nazidom was set forth last week in the Berlin suburb of Hcnnigsdorf. There gathered 1,800 Catholic children, aged 10 to 16, on church property for their first spring festival. The field was bright with their church club banners, blazoned with pictures of the Blessed Virgin and other saints. Suddenly from nowhere marched a company of Hitler Jugend. The company marched clean through the crowd of children, seized a banner, about-faced and marched back again. At this show of big-boy force, the priests herded their children back toward the railway station. At the station Hitler's Youths amused themselves by dashing among the children and snatching the rest of their banners. Bishop Bares of the Catholic Diocese of Berlin and Brandenburg sent smoking protests to Chancellor Hitler, to Prussia's Premier Hermann Goering and to Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick.

Nazis busied themselves during the week at the expense of the Jews in the Bavarian town of Gunzenhausen. It began when storm troopers piled into a Jewish saloon to reprimand an "Aryan" at the bar. In the excitement a Jew spat on a storm trooper. He got away somehow, fled from house to house, finally hanged himself. Meanwhile the whole town had turned out for a finish fight. A little racial war rammed up and down the streets of Gunzenhausen for hours. Soon the jail was jammed with prisoners, all Jews, and the wounded of both sides crawled home. One, a Jew, stabbed four times, fell on his bed and died.

With one form of worship the Nazis did not quarrel last week. Under Nazi encouragement, the superstitious peasants in the Bavarian Alps held bigger and better pagan celebrations to placate the old Teuton gods. It was spring and the peasants wanted the god of their mountains to be friendly with Weather, the grim master, through the coming year. Therefore they marched in ritual procession while young men cracked long whips to scare away witches. They danced and sang around bonfires as a great wheel of flame was sent tumbling down the mountainside to entertain the gods.

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