Public Enlightenment

It was the turn of No. 3 Nazi Goebbels to enjoy his personal triumph in Vienna Lat week, following those of No. 2 Nazi Goering and No. 1 Nazi Hitler. Arrests were reported to have reached a total of 34,000 in Vienna alone. The day by day suicide rate continued to climb 102, 112, 132. . . .

Orating to 25,000 Viennese who cheered him to the echo Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, the exultant Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment of Greater Germany, cried: "The number of suicides in Vienna remains the same; the difference is that, whereas before Germans committed suicide, it is now Jews! . . . I know some say 'the Jew also is a human being.' Just that word 'also' is the best indication of what the Jew really is! ... Our racial theory is the sole basis for the correct solution of the Jewish problem. . . .

"We are no barbarians! Who invented and still employs the guillotine? [Cries of "Die Franzosen!" (The French!)] Who exterminated whole social classes? [Cries of "Die Bolschewiken!" (The Bolsheviks!)] ... It is stupid to say 'Hitler means war.' . . . He tore the Treaty of Versailles to pieces and threw them in the faces of its beneficiaries. By so doing war was avoided! . . .

"There have been two occasions in which Germany feared France. One was at the time of the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the other on the occasion of the official proclamation announcing Germany's rearmament. I can admit quite frankly today that . . . The Fuehrer and we all were in fear and anxiety then. Today those fears have passed! There can no longer be any question of a 'promenade' from Paris to Berlin. That was once-- but will never be again!

"Our critics are morbid, degenerate, democratic intellectuals--relics of the 19th Century!" concluded the Minister for Public Enlightenment. "They are dead, they are unable to act!"

"Like a Dream," Same day at London the House of Lords raised a remarkable chorus of assent to the Nazification of Austria. The Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England read to Their Lordships a letter he said he had just received from a very eminent Viennese artist who described the events in Austria as "a sudden salvation, which seemed to us like a dream."

"The gratitude of Europe and the gratitude of the whole world is due at this time, in my opinion, to Hitler!" cried Lord Redesdale, to whom Lord Cecil dryly rejoined, ''If Lord Redesdale happened to be a Liberal, a Roman Catholic or a Jew in Austria, I very much doubt if he would talk so."

The former Labor Peer Lord Ponsonby, who made his political career as a champion of the League of Nations, before that was a Court page to Queen Victoria and today is a Government supporter, appeared to echo the sentiments of most of Their Lordships when he keynoted: "Nobody in this country can have any enthusiasm for a war to aid Czechoslovakia!"

100%. In Austria and other districts of Greater Germany the plebiscite called by Adolf Hitler is not to be held until April 10, but balloting began last week on German ships and among Germans living outside the Fatherland. Der Fuehrer won the plebiscite most recently held in Germany by 98.79%, but in last week's "early returns" Adolf Hitler was officially announced to be getting exactly 100% of the vote, thus for the first time drawing up level in popularity with Joseph Stalin.

Wollersdorf:. Josef Buerckel, the burly Nazi commissar sent by Berlin to Vienna to put on the plebiscite campaign, last week had barracks at Woellersdorf--which was used as a prison camp for opponents of Dollfuss and later Schuschnigg--soaked with gasoline and set afire. While thousands gaped and the flames roared skyward with such intense heat that Orator Burckel was nearly scorched upon his rostrum and perspiration poured down his beet-red face, he shouted that Nazis will never again be locked up at Woellersdorf. In Vienna there were rumors in responsible quarters that former Vice Chancellor Major Emil Fey did not recently commit suicide, but was called upon by Storm Troops who threatened to take his life unless he signed a confession that it was he who killed the late Chancellor Dollfuss, not the Nazi Planetta who is presently to be canonized as a "Nazi Martyr.'' The confessed Assassin Fey, according to these rumors, was then murdered by the Storm Troopers, and they announced his suicide. The conservative New York Herald Tribune was among papers which last week printed these unconfirmed rumors.

Catholic Angle. Nazi Buerckel front-paged, in Adolf Hitler's personal newspaper last week, photographic reproductions of a letter in which Catholics were urged to vote "Ja" in the coming plebiscite by Vienna Theodor Cardinal Innitzer, who at the bottom of his typewriting added in his own handwriting: "Heil Hitler!"

These and several similar endorsements by Catholic prelates obtained by Nazi Buerckel last week had in common the fact that these signed statements affirmed they were made not under duress but "joyfully," "with undisguised joy," "voluntarily." etc.

In Vatican City the Papal Secretary of State, His Eminence Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, meanwhile held repeated earnest councils with Papal statesmen. The semi-official newsorgan Osservatore Romano announced indirectly that the Holy See had not known of what Cardinal Innitzer was about to do. Later in Vienna the Cardinal explicitly denied reports of his having acted on instructions from the Supreme Pontiff.

The very powerful radio transmitter of the Papal State went on the air in German with a broadcast heard all over Greater Germany and taken by most listeners to be a condemnation of Cardinal Innitzer for having yielded to force, combined with an injunction to Catholics that in the plebiscite they should vote according to their consciences rather than Innitzer. An official Vatican translation of this broadcast into Italian was supplied to journalists by Papal dignitaries.

Just before April Fool's Day last week Orator Goebbels again let himself go: "The Church may have the mandate of God. but we have the mandate of the people. THIS WORLD IS OURS!"

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