If memory and the encyclopedia do not fail us, it was in the 279 B.C. that Pyrrhus achieved a spectacular victory over the Romans. But in the course of the fierce battle at Asculum, the flower of his army perished.
After accounts were taken, Pyrrhus exclaimed:
“One more such victory and we are lost.”
We feel that there is just enough of a glimmer of intelligence in Hitler’s warped intellect to realize fully that the developments of last Saturday, when he drowned the long fermenting opposition in blood, fit perfectly the phrase “Pyrrhic victory.”
After the time-honored fashion of other ruthless tyrants of perverted mentality, Hitler’s answer to discontent resulting from his “leadership” is a bloody bath, with hardly a trace of discrimination in the choice of his victims.
And like other freaks of history, for whose mantle he has been making such a powerful bid, there is a strong likelihood that Hitler knows his regime as well as he himself are doomed. No competent observer questions the fact that the massacre of last weekend was but a prelude to further horrors.
Seeds of discontent have been sown on such a wide scale that they cannot be stamped out before reaching fruition. The sharpening of the financial crisis, the low-hanging threat of nation-wide starvation are all too pronounced to be overlooked much longer.
The shooting of a few dozen men in his own party will not appear as a solution to any sane person. On the contrary, the executions are an impetus to further disturbances.
Interesting sidelights were provided on Bloody Saturday and its implications in our chat at the Algonquin Hotel with Franz Hoelering, exiled German editor who arrived in New York last Sunday to testify before the American Inquiry Commission.
Fully a day before the press published the news of President von Hindenburg’s whitewash for and appreciation of the Hitler terroristic acts, Herr Hoelering, keen analyst that he is, confidently predicted that the aged field marshal would lend his support and blessings to whoever happens to be holding the upper hand.
Now, the editor told us, the last pretense of Hitler’s “socialism” is over, and will no longer fool even the most gullible of workers. Now his inseparable link with the Junkers and high industrial interests is an established fact. Now the comparatively insignificant sector of the public, who were not certain whether Hitler was a puppet in the hands of the Thyssen, Krupp and similar interests, have no further logical foundation for doubting such an unholy alliance.
—L. Z.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
