Doctor's Medicine

The Lou Tellegen as well as the Propaganda Minister of Germany is gimpy little Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. His carryings-on with the actresses on whom he must pass before they may appear on the German stage or screen are a joke as well as a scandal in the upper circles of Naziland.

Among Nazi officials the bright-eyed Propaganda Minister is called "Little Doctor." Year ago, in a Berlin film, a seductive Czech actress was asked how to get ahead in the world. Her reply was: "Go find a good doctor." The audience, which guessed what doctor was meant, roared with laughter. The Little Doctor hurriedly withdrew the film. An added quirk to the situation was the fact that the Czech leading lady, Lida Baarova, was a particularly admired protegee of Dr. Goebbels. Last week, as Dr. Goebbels lay sick abed with what was officially reported as intestinal influenza, Lida Baarova's friendship with the Little Doctor made a sensational tale in the U. S. press.

Editor Wythe Williams of Connecticut's Greenwich Time wrote that a Berlin tipster had taken "a peek through the key-hole or a glance through the transom of the Goebbels sickroom," had seen the Little Doctor bundled in thick bandages-- not the usual treatment for intestinal influenza.

From The Daily News Syndicate in Switzerland and International News Service in London came spectacular additions to the story. Dr. Goebbels had been beaten, it was said, within an inch of his life by friends of Actress Baarova's husband. These friends, incensed because the husband had been sent to a concentration camp, had surprised the Propaganda Minister in Lida's rooms, might have killed him had it not been for the intervention of Dr. Goebbels' chauffeur. Frau Goebbels, one of Herr Hitler's more prominent tea-pourers, was supposed to have chuffed off to Copenhagen for the divorce she has long wanted.

Because no reliable confirmation of this story could be got from Berlin, best guess seemed to be that it was an echo of an earlier, better-documented tale of the Doctor's goings-on. Late in August it was whispered around Berlin that somebody, possibly Actress Baarova herself, had clouted Goebbels in the Baarova apartment. He did not make an appearance during the late August, visit of Hungarian Regent Nicholas Horthy, and when he made his brief appearance at the Nuernberg Congress in September, he was carrying the unmistakable vestige of a black eye.

Among some Berlin wiseacres there was gossip that Dr. Goebbels would be shorn of his power late this month by Fuehrer Hitler. The Fuehrer was said to be contemplating far-reaching changes in Nazi administration on January 30, the sixth anniversary of Nazi rule. Having failed to give his usual Christmas broadcast to Germany's children, Dr. Goebbels rallied for New Year's, and in a firm, clear voice expressed the general feeling in Germany that 1938 had been a great year for the Nazis. Said the doctor: "Never has it been so hard to say good-by to a dying year as to 1938. It was a magnificent year filled with victories and successes like none before it."

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