REICHSTAG’S FATE

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 August 1936, Page 4

REICHSTAG’S FATE

NO PART IN NAZI RULE.

LONDON, July 8.

Is tho Reichstag on the eve of total disappearance? It would seem, according to the Berlin correspondent of “The Manchester Guardian,” that even as a purely demonstrative body there is no place for the Reichstag in the scheme of Reich reform, and this dead limb of the present German Constitution may be removed. As a legislative body, the Reichstag ceased in practice to exist as soon as the Nazis obtained power, the party’s aim having been the suppression of all other political parties in the destruction of Parliamentary government’. An enabling Act gave the functions of tho Leegislation to the Government, which afterwards legislated by decree. Since the Weimar Constitution continued a nominal existence, the Reichstag had to be called to vote by a unanimous show of hands on amendments necessary for the alteration of tho Constitution, but now it has no function other than as an audience for certain of Herr Hitler’s major speeches. The Reichstag has no home, the old Reichstag building having been turned into a sort of museum, and it meets in an opera house. Not merely is it homeless and deprived of its functions, but it is doubtful whether it legally exists any more.

At one of the leading and best informed of tho Nazi weekly reviews points out: “According to the dead Weimar Constitution, the Reichstag must, within a. limited period following its election, be solemnly convoked. The period running from March 27 has already exceeded that limit. We do not know even to-day when it will meet.

“All we know is that it will meet in Berlin or in some other place if Herr Hitler wishes for some special reason to speak to the representatives of the nations as a whole. Parliament, which in its form is a mere survival of the past, but in its spirit is an institution of the present, has no ohter purpose than this. Therefore, there is no occasion to dawdle away time with the empty ceremony of its procedure.” The paper points out that Cabinets are sufficiently large for legislative purposes in themselves, but goes on to show that even their limited size is unnecessary, for it reveals that the recent law making kidnapping a capital offence, was promulgated because HeraHitler had given an instruction for the darfting of a law to that effect.