Now-editorial Notes

At Baireuth, during the Wagner festival, amidst a mass of brown-shirted storm troops, a Monument of the Nazi movement has been unveiled. The Monument represents a huge fist of bronze in the act of throttling snakes. And the inscription on the pedestal refers to the “sound of storm bells, thunders of vengeance and the dire fate of a people ensnared by dreams.”

Whatever may be said of the Nazis, it must be admitted that they have the “courage” of their crimes. No critic of the Nazi movement could better characterize them than they themselves have done it in their monument of the Bronze Fist—with storm bells, with thunders of vengeance, and their salvation of the German from being “ensnared by dreams.”

It is a Monument to brute force, to paganism, to barbarism, to war-madness. This is Hitler’s contribution to Germany, perpetuated in bronze, which should be preserved as the symbol of disgrace and degradation imposed by him upon the German people.

A COSTLY VICE

Fifty Jewish physicians have been forced out of their positions in municipal hospitals in Vienna, as a result of the German-Christian policy of the new city administration. Notwithstanding all the promises made by the Dollfuss government that there will be no anti-Jewish discriminations, the Vienna authorities are emulating the ways of the German Nazis.

As we pointed out at the time the new Austrian Constitution was proclaimed, it is a document that contains vague clauses which could easily be given any interpretations the authorities desire. And now the authorities have already resorted to tricky subterfuges for the purpose of eliminating Jews from civil service.

The little dictator, who is defying Hitler, is borrowing some of his methods. No nation can afford the costly vice of religious and racial hate and discrimination. Austria can afford it least of all.

NAZI DEMENTIA

The Nazi press has intensified its attack on the Jews of America by accusing them of harming Germany in order to further the conquest of the world by Communism. Samuel Untermyer, according to the Deutsche Wochenschau, contributed $50,000 to the Communists. Bernard M. Baruch is described as the biggest individual contributor to the Soviet government, and Professor Felix M. Frankfurter is credited with having elaborated plans for the conquest of America by Communism.

Thus the Nazis are furnishing further evidence of their utter madness and irresponsibility. But there is system in their madness. They are attempting to discredit Samuel Untermyer, the man who has courageously and far-sightedly helped to crystallize the sentiment in favor of employing the only effective weapon against Nazi madness—the economic and moral boycott of Hitlerite Germany. And on the other side, they are seeking to discredit the American government by accusing Baruch and Frankfurter, regarded by them as the closest advisers of President Roosevelt, as Communist conspirators.

The attempts to identify Communism and Bolshevism with the Jews, to brand Communism as a distinctly Jewish movement, are not new. The White Russian reactionary anti-Semites have indulged in this sport ever since 1917, even though the facts failed to bear out the accusations made by the Russian pogromists and their dupes in various lands. The Nazis have inherited the Black Hundred anti-Semitism and have added to it the ideology of their own spurious race theorists and demented charlatans.

The propaganda of the Nazis, by means of fabricating counterfeit facts, is destroying them, for it reveals to the world their utter stupidity, their base motives, their criminal irresponsibility, and their unparalleled incompetence.

Make a habit of glancing through the classified advertising columns. They may have a surprise in store for you.