Germany’s Moral and Financial Obligations

On the same day three significant events were reported from Berlin.

Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank, now appointed by Hitler as financial and economic dictator, has arrogantly disavowed Germany’s pledges on her loans and has hurled a defiant challenge to the United States and other nations.

Nazi Reichsbishop Ludwig Mueller, Hitler’s church dictator, has instituted an “inquisition” directed at the opponents of the official German Protestant Church, and many dissenting pastors are arrested by the secret police.

Dorothy Thompson, the special correspondent and magazine writer, who in private life is Mrs. Sinclair Lewis, wife of the famous American novelist, was practically expelled from Germany because of her articles on Hitler and the treatment of the Jews in Germany.

Thus Nazi Germany in one day was seen fighting on three fronts —against the outside world in the field of economics, against religious freedom, and against the foreign press.

Dr. Schacht, who for years was regarded as Germany’s ablest financial expert and guide, who was believed to be broad-minded because of his constant relations with the economists and bankers of other nations, has undergone a complete change and has become an ardent Hitlerite, singing the praises of his master and submissively obeying his commands.

Only seven years ago Dr. Schacht wrote that his mission was “to help strengthen the growth of mutual confidence between nations and the determination in future to avoid political catastrophes by the establishment of a community of intellectual and economic interests and reciprocal goodwill.”

He also wrote at that time:

“Everywhere the war has brought the recognition of the fact that the nations must understand one another better, and that above all a process of moral education must be inaugurated if wars are to be avoided in the future…. No doubt