Despite the fact that all liberal elements were voted out of office in the powerful German American Conference last week, the election returns indicated a lapsing fervor for the Nazis. Those who attended the affair have expressed surprise that the liberal American elements pulled as many votes as they did.
It will be remembered that Victor Ridder, who is doing his best to run the New Yorker Staats Zeitung as an American rather than a Hitlerite paper, refused to run for office. Nevertheless, he was defeated by the Nazi Froelich (an official of the North German Lloyd) by a plurality of only fourteen votes.
From sources it is learned that Ridder expected a much smaller vote. It is understood that if the vote had been taken two months ago it would have gone almost unanimously to the Nazi elements.
many have wondered about the occupation of Reinhold Walter, present national commander of the League of Friends of New Germany. The tight-lipped brownshirt thus far as refused to give interviews and his comrades keep his past a deep, deep secret.
We are prepared to satisfy whatever curiosity there may exist on the subject of Walters’s profession. Prior to his connection with the Nazis he was employed for no great length of time at any gainful occupation. He joined the Nazis last year, and has made a living doing chores for them ever since. As head of the national organization he receives a regular salary, which aggregates as nearly as we can learn, $20,000 yearly-as long as the outfit lasts.
While we are in the mood for telling secrets we may as well tell about Spanknoebel, who disappeared when the government issued an indictment of this arrest under the war time espionage act.
Spanknoebel is now a minor leader of the stormtroops in a small town in Germany. For a while he was placed in charge of a non-important concentration camp, but, enterprising as ever, he discovered a more lucrative profession.
At present the former Number 1 of the Nazis is manning a Hitlerite news service, which serves Nazi news hot off the swastika for all receptacles into which it can be tossed. The boy, it is said, is making good in the fatherland.
Ben Lazare, leader of the Blue Men of America (formerly the anti-Nazi Blue Shifts) has told us that that within the next few days he will have important news of the front page of Bulletin.
According to the generalissimo his forces will be hooking up with one of the more important anti Nazi boycott organizations. He says that through the picketing activities of his outfit, and only by this means, will the boycott become one hundred percent effective.
Lazare, incidentally, clams his Blue Men have a membership of 9,000. “Paid up?” we asked him. “What do you think,??? he declared that in high dudgeon, “we can’t demand out two bits (provincial for a quarter) monthly from everybody in these hard times!”
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