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Al smith, product of Democracy and exponent of political common sense, has proved himself not only the friend but the protagonist of Tolerance. He believes in it for its own sake and because he has, in his way, suffered somewhat from the effects of Intolerance. Writing in the current issue of The New Outlook, of which he is the editor, he declares that the elevation of Adolf Hitler is the worst indictment that can be brought against the German people.

After pointing out the various trials which have been met by the American Constitution, "today the oldest, soundest and the most satisfactory fundamental law of any nation in the world," he goes on to say:

"There is no better way of measuring the benefits of constitutional, democratic government as exemplified in our experience, than by analyzing recent events in the late German Republic. The German Constitution showed numerous evidences of a study of our own fundamental law. It was assumed that what had, on the whole, worked so well here could be transplanted and made to flourish in Berlin, but the people of Germany were unable to live up to, or under it. They began by suspending important provisions, and ended recently by scrapping the entire document. The spirit and the letter of every provision of our bill of rights has been violated by the Hitler government. Freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press have been destroyed overnight. The right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable search and seizure, has been wantonly violated. Civil rights and impartial judicial processes have been abolished. The home rule powers of the several independent and ancient states which united to make up the German Republic, and of their people, have been ruthlessly sacrificed to an arbitrary central authority. Government, business, the professions, the arts, the sciences and even religion itself must goose-step under the orders of the brown shirts. Democratic government, in the sense that we know it, has died with the German Constitution.

"The greatest indictment which can be brought against the German people is that to date they have proved themselves incapable of living under a democratic government, and that there is so little of the tradition of a free people among them, that order can be maintained only through the dictatorship of a Hitler. It is clear that the world has not yet been made safe for democracy."

JOHN GUNTHER’S ANALYSIS

John Gunther, novelist and correspondent, now in Vienna for the Chicago Daily News, writing in the current issue of The Nation, vividly describes the manner in which the Hitler propaganda of hate within Germany has created a solid front of enmity among the nations outside Germany. Although the forcedly pacific note in Hitler’s recent speech before the Reichstag somewhat modifies Mr. Gunther’s summary, it does not negate it, a fact which was shown at Geneva by the support given to the anti-German report of Sean Lester, Irish reporter on minorities for the League, on the Bernheim case by the majority of the nations represented in the League’s Council.

Mr. Gunther writes:

"The net result of Hitler internationally has been to make Germany just about as popular as it was in the years from 1914 to 1918. Ten weeks of madness have, by knocking revisionism into a cocked hat, nullified the results of ten years of progress. Around the borders of Germany from Strasbourg to Danzig Hitlerism has produced anger, distrust, disgust, and fear. It is not merely the beating up of a few hundred or a few thousand Jews or Socialists or Communists that has achieved this remarkable metamorphosis, this conversion of a gradual growth of friendship toward Germany into enmity and alarm. It is something radically deeper. It is a latent fear of militant Germany, a fear of incorrigibly belligerent Prussianism, a fear, in short, of Germany going to war again. A positive religion of pre-war militarism and brutality is flashing through the Reich, plus a semi-mystical absorption of the nation into a fanatic unity of creed that recalls, in some respects, the growth of communism. Very apt is the French pun dubbing the Hitler regime ‘Boche-vist.’

"France is united as never since the war, because, as it was put brilliantly, the right hates Germany and the left hates Hitler. Great Britain is unloosing speeches by Lloyd George, Lord Grey, and other ministers that make one think one is reading Hansard in 1913. The Poles are terrified. Soviet Russia is on good terms with France for the first time in years, and for the first time in history has come to regard Poland as something more than an international nuisance—it sees Poland as a comfortable block of land between itself and Germany. The Dutch and Scandinavians are filled with disgust. Even Italy is not so warm in its brotherly fascist greetings. Mussolini, it will be noticed, has not absolutely deluged Hitler with invitations to come to Rome. This is the brilliant record of the Nazis in foreign policy to date."

HARPER’S ON HITLERISM

In a Vein so light as to border on the humorous, Edward Martin, who occupies the department known as the "Editor’s Easy Chair" in Harper’s Magazine, discourses on the Hitler persecution of the Jews. He implies, without asserting it, that if we go far back enough we will find a mixture in every race, for of the twelve original tribes of Israel, only two—of whom present-day Jews are the descendants—remained faithful and ten became what is known as "lost," meaning that they became absorbed into other peoples, just as they became absorbed into members of the ten tribes. And he then continues:

"But when the Inquisition succeeded in turning the Jews out of Spain and Portugal—the best lot of Jews in the world, by the way—it was not found that the kingdoms of the peninsula profited by this deliverance. The experience of Spain left in the world a deep-seated opinion that Jew-baiting is unlucky and that driving the Jews out of a country does not make for that country’s prosperity."

Continuing, Mr. Martin writes:

"Now the Nazis seem to see the Jews all as one family and one kind and are hitting them all on the head. They seem to have little respect for individual varieties, which seems to be a mistake, since there are great differences in quality, ability, and character of Jews according to the conditions under which they have lived and the racial mixtures that are in them. As wanderers of the earth, they have undergone rather more racial mixtures than most races, though all races have some, and the British races in particular a good many.