To Hell

In the mornings, onetime Boxer Sydney Robey Leibbrandt punched his shadow about his cell. In the afternoons, he ranted Nazi cant. At night, he ignored his comfortable prison bed for a wooden bench. Three days of each month, he fasted.

Brought to trial for treason in South Africa (TIME, Dec. 28), Sydney Leibbrandt turned out to be a German agent, who arrived in a U-boat to organize sabotage and rebellion against Field Marshal Smuts's Government. Last week in Pretoria, at the end of the Union's longest treason trial, the judge asked sneer-faced Sydney if he wished to say anything. Up whipped Sydney's arm in a Nazi salute. Out whipped the words, in harsh Afrikaans: "Long live Adolf Hitler, long live National Socialist South Africa. I expected to die if I came back and I'm not afraid to do so, To hell with your mercy."

Sentence: death.

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