Birthdays

There were many birthdays last week. The Japanese Empire, 660 years older than Christianity, celebrated its 2,600th anniversary with plans for its aggrandizement (see p. 38). The U. S. Marines, twitching at their triggers as always, were 165 years old. King Vittorio Emanuele of Italy was 69 and disappointed at the news from Greece (see p. 24). President Jorge Ubico of Guatemala was 62 and successful (see p. 37). In Moscow, Russia celebrated the 23rd anniversary of its Revolution with a military demonstration and professions of peace, while in Washington tiny Ambassador Constantine Alexandrovich Oumansky served caviar to U. S. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles and to Allied and Axis diplomats. The second anniversary of great Kamal Atatuerk's death was commemorated in Turkey, while Turkey's fate was discussed in Berlin . Few nations bothered to mark the 22nd anniversary of the World War I Armistice this week, an irony made more ironical by the fact that last week's most important anniversary was the 17th of an abortive Bavarian Putsch which was little more than a brawl.

On Nov. 9, 1923, General Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff and a handful of moth-eaten followers, including Adolf Hitler, marched out of the Buergerbraeu Keller in Munich and tried to take the Town Hall. Since the National Socialist Party came to power, Nov. 8, Beer Hall Putsch's Eve, has been both a sentimental and a political occasion. Last year, just after Hitler had harangued his old comrades, a time bomb exploded in Buergerbraeu Keller, killing seven unimportant people, injuring 63, and Germany used the incident to fan hatred of Britain. This year there was no need to do that.

If anybody believed the peace rumors that have circulated recently (TIME, Nov. 11), he knew better after what happened in Munich last week. The Royal Air Force made a raid on the city, somehow timed to coincide with Hitler's presence there, and somehow a rack of bombs aimed at the railroad station happened to overshoot its mark. Bombs splattered in Munich's streets. The world-wide broadcast of Hitler's speech was abruptly canceled.

But Adolf Hitler had not been so foolhardy as to risk his skin near the spot where he barely saved it last year. The Buergerbraeu Keller had not been repaired and the meeting took place in the Loewenbraeu Keller, more than a mile away, where Hitler addressed his henchmen in his most boastful speech to date. In the field-grey uniform of Supreme Field Lord, little Adolf Hitler roared:

"I am one of the hardest men Germany has had for decades, perhaps for centuries.

I am equipped with the greatest authority of any German leader. But above all, I believe in my success. I believe in it unconditionally. I am convinced that Providence has brought me thus far and has spared me from all dangers in order to let me lead the German people in this battle."

Britain, said the Fuehrer, taking up his old refrain, had refused to make peace with him. "I wanted the closest friendship with England. I thought the Germanic races should go together. If England had agreed, good. They did not agree. Also good. If England says that the war will continue, that is all the same to me. But it will end with our victory. You may believe me in that.

"We are prepared for the future--better than ever before. Germany, with her allies, today is strong enough to oppose any combination of powers in the world."

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