Evening Post MONDAY, MARCH 20, 1933. THE LOGIC OF VIOLENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 66, 20 March 1933, Page 6

Evening Post MONDAY, MARCH 20, 1933. THE LOGIC OF VIOLENCE

On / Saturday the German Government was reported to have ordered "that cases of persons who had previously, committed misdeeds from patriotic motives should be urgently revised and the offenders pardoned wherever possible." There seems to be nothing 'in this order unworthy of a Nazi Government, except the last two words. At Lodi, when, one of Napoleon's officers said that it was impossible for his troops to force the passage of the bridge in the face of an annihilating fire, his answer was, "How! impossible! That word is not French." And surely when it is a question of pardoning patriotic murderers Herr Hitler might be expected to show the same courage and declare that jthe word "impossible" is not German. What crime can be too [devilish for a Government to pardon 'which has already pardoned and released the murderers of Pietrzuch? jNo offence was alleged against their victim except that he was a Communist, and his position in the social scale was sufficiently indicated by the fact that he shared a bedroom with, his brother and his mother. Before the Court at Beuthen on August 21 the mother testified that they were awakened in the night by the entrance of armed men, and that she saw them take her son from his bed and beat him to death. Though the five Nazis who did the deed had arms, they preferred more brutal methods. 'A doctor gave evidence that Pietrzueh had twenty-nine wounds in his face, where he had been poked with a broken billiard cue.! He had a shot-wound in Ins arm, and was killed by a boot-heel severing the artery in his throat. When the murderers entered' the court they had "nonchalantly and cheerfully exchanged Fascist salutes and greetings with the senior Nazi officials." When the inevitable sentence of death was pronounced, it was welcomed by the most important of these officials, the leader of the "Storm Troops" in Silesia, as the^ signal for Germany's liberation." Cheers for Herr Hitler were given 'at his invitation inside the court, outside his "Storm Troops" ran amuck in the streetsof Beuthen, smashing the windows of Jewish shops and of Catholic and. Socialist newspaper offices. The stampede was given a nation-wide extension by the telegram addressed to these cold-blooded ruffians in which Herr, Hitler identified their crime with the "honour" of his party. ■ ' In view of the monstrous verdict, he wrote, I feel myself bound to you comrades, in absolute loyalty, your liberty being now a question of our [honour and our duty to fight against | the Government which rendered possible such happenings. In a manifesto issued immediately afterwards the Nazi leader denounced the Chancellor, Dr. yon Papen, as "the executioner of the fighters for national freedom" and declared that his name, was written in 'history .with the blood of patriotic Germans. The Government replied very bravely that these "passionate protests" should be directed '^againsj. the authors of these bloody deeds and not against the State^Laiid then collapsed. On the'transparently absurd, pretext, that the murderers mayiiot-have-known of the emergency decree under which they were [ tried their sentences were commuted, though murder was of course a capital offence under the ordinary law. It is much to General. Yon bchleicher's ,credit that from his Christmas amnesty of political' offenders he excluded these peculiarly revolting criminals whom the Naz?s had continued to honour. But the Nazi Chancellor has now set them free, and on this point, as, indeed, so far as one can see, yjn every other, Dr. v,on Papen and the rest of ■ Hindenburg's "watch dogs" appear tohave been no better than dummies. Hitler has turned these murderers loose.^ He has arrested thousands of citizens who have not been guilty of murder nor, for the most part, of any crime at all, except that he does not like their politics, and nobody knows what he has done with them. He has given his police something like "carte blanche" to shoot at Communists in the streets without liability for the consequences. And now, after thoroughly enjoying himself _ for a whole fortnight in an official saturation of vengeance and j violence, which is mostly without any legal warrant, he begins to see that tile policy has one seriousl disadvantage in trie number of. unofficial imitators. A week ago we were told that % series of "unauthorised miniature coups" had been begun by individual Nazis. Special mention was made of a patriot named' Strichler who, having praclaimed himself "Commissioner of North Bavaria," marched to Nuremberg at.the head! of "Storm Troops," provoking a strong protest from the "Steel Helmets" but fortunately no collision. Another Nazi had appointed himself Lord Mayor of Altona, and "numerous similar, arrests of Mayors in many towns," wore reported at the same time. - But the number of German gities

is limited, and a man must need a good deal of enterprise and organisation if he is to set up as an unofficial Mayor and "get away with it." On the other hand a man needs very little of either to enable him to set up as an unofficial murderer. To buy or to steal a revolver and to possess or profess the right brand of patriotism—which is, of course, the Nazi brand—are the only indispensable qualifications, but the help of a mate or two will make a better job of it. A case reported from Berlin on Thursday shows how simple the process is:— Four armed men at Straiibing dragged a Jewish moneylender named Stelzl from his bed at midnight and bundled him into a car. Later his body was found riddled with bullets. Stelzl won a slandei" action against a Nazi in 1931. Another illustration, reported in a Cologne message on the same day, was the suicide of the Burgomaster of Weiven, "following a gang attack led by a publican whose arrest he had ordered." But the language is suggestive of Chicago rather than Cologne. These things are done by gangs in Chicago, but • the ■ Nazis prefer to talk of patriotism. Nor can we see how the logic of Nazi patriotism can draw any clear line between official arid unofficial crime. The party was in opposition when one of its papers on August 25 supported Hitler's plea for the release of Pietrzuch's murderers with an argument summarised as follows:— The "Vodkisher Beobachter" stated that the Nazis "would not suffer the death sentence to be carried out on even one of the five" condemned at Beuthon, and openly demanded one-' sided justice against political opponents ana the right to take life. The Nazis did not admit that "one man is like another, one deea like another," and the principle of equality before "the law'could not be uphejd if national safety was to be preserved. ' Whatever may be the logical difficulties presented by Herr Hitler's attempt to repress the murderous spirit which he has previously encouraged, it is good news that he has issued "a second and stronger warning against Nazi violence," and it may be hoped that he will succeed before it has reduced the country to chaos and anarchy.