War Odds

Because Adolf Hitler denounced and violated the Treaty of Versailles (TIME, March 25), underwriters of London's ubiquitous Lloyds did a brisk business last week insuring against war in Europe at distinctly shorter odds.

Previously this year Lloyds premiums have been 25 to 1 against any war during the next twelvemonth involving Britain and 19 to 1 against France and Germany fighting it out. Last week the new premiums were announced respectively as 10 to 1 and 7 to 1. Unannounced and sub rosa, Englishmen were placing insurance bets against Adolf Hitler's death by assassination.

At Furth and Zirndorf, in Franconia, stalwart Nazi Storm Troopers suddenly appeared last week with paste pots, plastered both towns with screaming posters:

"IN ENGLAND BETTING IS GOING ON THAT OUR FUHRER HITLER WILL BE SHOT. IF THIS HAPPENS, WE WILL KILL ALL JEWS AND FREE MASONS."

Response was instantaneous. By evening Jews and Masons sat trembling behind their locked doors and bolted windows while fist-shaking mobs surged in the streets and more & more provocative posters appeared:

"KILL THE JEWS!" "AVENGE OUR LEADER!"

By midnight Nazidom's first avowed pogrom was ready to burst. Once again, however, Nazi luck held. Just before the brownshirt mobs got completely out of hand Franconia's famed Jew-baiting Boss Nazi, Dr. Julius Streicher, decided that somebody had made a mistake. Though he has shrieked "Death to Jews!" from a thousand hustings, Nazi Streicher abruptly blamed everything on a subordinate official of his Brown House and manifestoed in time's nick: "Irresponsible elements have been spreading rumors that Jews had attempted to assassinate our Leader. In the ensuing excitement they demanded that Jews be punished by being beaten to death. In Franconia I alone issue orders. I have ordered the expulsion of one district leader as a disciplinary measure. I will order the expulsion and arrest of any member of the Nazi party organization who allows himself to be carried away by lawless impulses."

Methodical police, who had allowed the posters to be stuck up on what they understood to be Boss Streicher's orders, methodically tore them down.

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