Press Purge

Adolf Hitler makes most of his money by selling Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), the autobiographic "Nazi Bible" which has passed 2,000,000 copies, and out of his newspaper Voelkisclier Beobachter ("The People's Observer").

Burly Max Amann directs Eher, the firm which publishes both Kampf and Beobachter. Fortnight ago another Berlin newspaper, founded by Jews, nosed the Realmleader's organ out of first circulation place (TIME, April 29). No man to take this lying down is Max Amann. Two years ago Employer Hitler made him President of the Chamber of the German Press with vast theoretical powers. They came in handy last week. Crystalizing them with swift pen strokes, Nazi Max ripped out and signed three decrees mak-ing himself on their face Master of the Press.

Ironical Max's three astonishing decrees were titled thus:

1) An Ordinance for Safeguarding the Independence of the Newspaper Publishing System. This suppressed the newsorgans of all German religious groups. Exempting from interference papers published by Nazis or the Government, it made all employes of other German papers direct appointees of Max Amann who can dismiss anyone at pleasure. Not only newspaper staffs and owners but "even creditors" must be Aryans.

2) An Ordinance for Closing Newspaper Publishing Concerns to Eliminate Unhealthy Competitive Conditions. Under this Max Amann can close down any German paper he thinks is competing unduly with a Nazi paper.

3) An Ordinance for the Removal of the Scandal Press. This closes down German papers that "obtain their character and circulation by reporting events in a form not in accordance with their importance for the public or likely to give offense."

As Nazi Max began to feel his oats he flashed off to every German editor this order: DO NOT USE BRITISH ACCOUNTS OF THE MACDONALD ARTICLE AS THE GERMAN NEWS BUREAU IS ISSUING A SPECIALLY PREPARED TEXT. Thus the German people were prevented this week from reading an article earnestly addressed to them by Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald in his National Labor fortnightly News Letter. Into this pronouncement against Adolf Hitler, the strongest yet issued by a leading statesman of any Great Power, Mr. MacDonald packed many a homely Scotch remark:

"No country has a right to refuse to meet others. . . . My first grave doubts of German diplomacy arose when Germany left the League for reasons which I have never been able to appreciate except on the assumption that the German Government was indifferent to the pacification of Europe. . . . Germany is arming--an army greater than that of any other nation in Europe, an air force already declared to equal ours and a fleet that would be the equal of the French and superior to the Italian. . . . [Germany] has broken up the road to peace. . . . And beset it with terrors. It claims a measure of armed power which puts most of the nations of Europe at its mercy. Every reflecting, reasonable German must see the force of the point I am making". ... I have written in regret, not merely in self-righteous condemnation. The door to honorable agreement ... is still open. . . . No one but Germany itself will close it."

This appeal, which might have moved some of the German people, was so distorted and cut down to the merest summary before it reached them that James Ramsay MacDonald succeeded only in further annoying Adolf Hitler who was expected daily to burst out with a fresh manifesto of defiance. Meanwhile he let it be known that Germany is building U-boats.

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