The Bulletin’s Day Book

Hitler has rolled up another victory in the underground warfare between himself and the volatile Goering. Heinrich Himmler, young and brutally efficient, one of Hitler’s most dependable and valued allies in this conflict, has been named inspector-general of the Prussian political police of which Goering is nominally the head.

Himmler has been commander of the secret police in all the Reich states except Prussia where Goering, as premier, appointed himself police head. Perhaps Himmler’s chief duty has been to get the “dirt” on all the Nazi leaders and keep tabs on them for his master. At any rate, it has been one of the most important tasks he has performed. It is reliably reported that were the contents of the special file he has assembled at Munich made public, the revelations of scandal and duplicity would far exceed anything yet charged by the most violent of anti-Nazis.

His appointment must be looked upon as a weakening of Goering’s position, since, while Goering technically remains head of the Prussian secret police, the reins of power are actually in the hands of this Hitler aide. The Gestapo, hereafter, must be considered as Hitler’s personal police arm.

What is constructive criticism? That is a question that is perplexing Germany’s non-Nazi editors. Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, supreme arbiter of what Germany shall read, see, hear and think, finds his completely coordinated press “monotonous.” In making his discovery, he is some months behind the reading public.

Having found the press monotonous because German editors, for some strange reason, prefer conformity to a dictator’s rule than loss of jobs and enforced residence in concentration camps, the minister for propaganda and public enlightenment blames the newspapermen and tells them he wants “less monotony and more criticism.”

The criticism, however, he warns them, must be “constructive” with the proviso that it must be supported by a “readiness to assume responsibility.”

This responsibility is the rub. What editor will, for instance, criticize the esthetic judgments of Herr Doktor Goebbels? Or question the Nazi Jewish policy, or reveal the real state of affairs in Germany’s foreign trade or in her employment problem? About the only thing these poor editors can criticize or attack is the Jew.

Trebitsch-Lincoln, of unhallowed fame has returned to the limelight after years of obscurity. He returned, not as a German spy but as a missionary seeking to convert Canadians to the joys of Buddhism.

In Asiatic costume, with two gleaming bits of jade in the long string of black beads he wore over his black robes, and a black skull cap on his shaven head, he told newspapermen at Vancouver, “I have wiped out the past.”

But that is something easier said than accomplished and the pious abbott, Chao-Kung, remains to most people, the apostate Jew who became a Presbyterian minister and a curate in the Church of England; the Hungarian who became a British citizen; the British M. P. who became a forger and spy, German monarchist and a mysterious power behind the throne in the attempt to create a new Chinese dynasty.