News Brief

######### me any longer. ###ly show your stuff if I could get away with it, Schmidt,’ one of them said to me. ‘But I wouldn’t dare to. It would ruin my business.'”

The “Aryan” Mr. Schmidt, who, although now a good American, feels nothing but warmth for the people of the country where he was born, mopped his forehead, as though he were living all over again those months when he saw his carefully built business crumble to nothing.

“Those retail merchants who had been my customers for over five years,” he said, “were even afraid to sell German candy in bulk.

“‘Our own employes would betray us,’ they said.

“Finally it got so bad that I had to give up my position altogether. I’m in an entirely different business now.”

Frequently those who come into a newspaper office and volunteer information have some axe or other to grind.

Not so Mr. Schmidt. True, he has been somewhat hit economically by this country’s reaction to the Nazi insanity, but he by no means has been rendered destitute. He is doing quite well in his new line of endeavor.

Although many of his business relations in the past have been with Jews and he feels friendly toward them in a general way, he harbors no prejudice either for or against them. He regards them merely as human beings who are entitled to whatever amount of respect, or lack or respect, they merit as individuals. Jews, as a race, are not particularly important to him in his present work.

The above facts are mentioned merely to bring out that Mr. Schmidt came into the offices of the Jewish Daily Bulletin without any desire for personal gain or publicity.

He is interested in the Jewish situation only incidentally. He is deeply concerned, however, over what the Nazis are doing to his own friends and relatives in Germany and over the havoc they are wreaking in the international and economic status of the Fatherland.

###### and ### certain will soon emerge again.

In discussing the prospects of the speedy collapse of Hitlerism, Mr. Schmidt used a phrase which has become a truism in the concerted Jewish effort to terminate the dominance of the Reich bigots—a “united front.”

“Unless they are faced with a united front,” he said, “the Nazis may continue indefinitely. In Berlin the Hitler group are inclined to pooh-pooh the boycott.

” ‘If we can get prices low enough and if we can get other countries to reduce their tariffs, the boycott will affect us about as much as a cup of water would swell the Atlantic Ocean.’

“I personally know this is untrue, because while I was selling candy I discovered that prices were immaterial.

“The important thing, however, is to convince the masses of German people, and here is where a united front is needed.”

He paused for emphasis before he made the following statement, which a Bulletin representative later checked and verified:

“Charles Spitz, the Jewish head of Spitz Arnstein and Company, a large New York candy importing firm, sailed for Germany three weeks ago to buy German candy,” he said.

“Spitz was bound for the Leipzig Fair. He thought he could get bargains there, due to present conditions. I could have told him that there are no bargains in German goods today, at any price, because he’ll find himself unable to sell them.

“The point is, however, that his appearance at the Leipzig Fair will have a bad effect, insofar as the fight against Hitlerism is concerned, because the Nazis will ballyhoo his presence and will say, ‘See! What is all this talk about boycott? Here we have a New York Jew coming to Leipzig to buy our goods. That ought to prove that these reports are unfounded.”

At the Spitz Arnstein offices, the secretary was reluctant to discuss her employer’s plans but admitted that he had sailed for Europe three weeks ago, that he is now in Austria, and that he had originally intended going to the Leipzig ###ir to buy merchanidse. He may since have decided against continuing on to Germany, she said.

She asked that no “publicity” be given to the matter.

A. J. B.