INTIMIDATION IN GERMANY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18057, 6 April 1933, Page 7

INTIMIDATION IN GERMANY

NAZI WAR ON PRESS

CENTRE PARTY WARNING

BERLIN, Feb. 19.

Germania, the organ of the Roman Catholic Centre Party, and Centro newspapers throughout the Rhenish and Westphalian Provinces of Prussia (where the Centre Party counts its greatest strength) were yesterday suspended for tlu'ce days. The Governor of Westualia, a Centrist, has asked to be relieved of his duties. He and his cul league of tho Rhineland Province wen in reality superseded when a special lolice commissioner, responsible only to the Actingi Prussian Minister of tho Intel ior, Captain Goermg, was given overriding powers for these two provinces. After a conference between leading Centrists and Captain Goering to-day tho ban was raised, only one issue having been affected. The reason for the ban was the publication in the Centre Press f a manfesto of 13 leading Roman Catholic associations. This document, one of the few accurate descriptions of existing conditions recently published, deserves part quotation. It says:— “Tho process begun in the middle of last year is one of national deterioration, fhe. people are bewildered, the conception of legality has been shattered, the gulf between the social classes deepened, Hatred, enmity, and violence everywhere, that is the position. . . Law and justice are what the people yearn for. There is a wide feeling that certain of our rulers have no respect for the nation’s constitutional rights and that they use discrimination. Faith in the authority of the law has thus been shaken and uncertainty has developed. . . The Reichstag was dissolved without need and the Prussian Diet in breach of the Constitution, similarly tho Prussian muneipalities. ... We hear proud words about the German spirit, German loyalty, German freedom and honor, true Christianity, and purified religion. In our conviction it is German to be loyal to the oath taken to the Constituton, to love freedom, but equally to respect the freedom of opponents, and not to allow a"ts of violence to no unpunished. . . . What will be the end of all this? A life and death struggle, front against front, Germany the scene of civil war.”

ELECTION NOT FREE Many mure Socialist and Communist newspapers have been suspended, no reasons being given. The Nazi press exiiausts unchecked the vocabulary of defamation and calumny against political i.pponenls. Contact between the Renunlican parlies and their electors is Ik ing interrupted. There seems lie reason why the methods employed should stop short of the bailot-ia.x, and evi n now the elect.on can ban .y no tailed “free.’

i aiitain flooring has issued directions for the application of the drastic powers against political assembly and the press taken recently bv a decree of Feoruaiv A.

This order says the motive of the do roe was “to protect the Government's work of reconstruction fn in interruption by elements inimical to the .Tate”; local authorities must remember bis in using the powers of the decree, and must consider “the motives and amis’’ of any offences against it. It was not issued “to binder this national elements of the population in their welcome and necessary co-operation with the Government.”

The implication i s that offences against the decree (such as acts of violence, riot • mg, or defamation in the press) aie to be rigorously dealt with only when comm.tted by “Marxists”—a generic term or all h '(.stile, to the present minority Government

On Friday armed students in Nazi uniform entered the Prussian State Art School in Schoenebeig, “arrested ’ the members of an examining hoard for art teachers then sitting, put them in the street, nailed up the- doors of their rooms, hoisted the Nazi flag, and drove away. The Nazi students’ organiseL u issues a statement triumphantly dcs ribmg this exploit of “the Nazi students storm detachment,” demanding the dis missal of the “Jewish and Marxist pr< fess r.s” thus expelled, and laying stress on the fact that they were not interfered • ifh by the nolice. A significant senUmce says that “Communist students wlm provocatively defended themselves were promptly dealt with.” MORE DISMISSALS The new Nazi Police Chief for Berlin has summarily dismissed several high officials from the police presidency, and though the victims themselves may have been in -doubt about the reasons, the Nazi An- iiff is fully informed, and accuses them of favoring! the immigration and naturalisation of “eastern Jews” and so on. Dismissals of broadcasting officials and employees are also reported from many stations, and the lower grades of the Prussian Civil Service and tho Prussian police are also, if "noi't be true, about to underg a Nazi combing. The new rulers continue to state that they intend to remain in power after the le 'lions whatever happens, these statements completely ignoring the President’s Constitutional position. Dr. Goelibels, the Nazi pn paganda leader, at Essen yesterday said the Nazis, once having grasped power, world never again relinquish it. Those who were so little versed in the uses of lower that they allowed themselves t • he chased out of office by a lieuteeant and 10 men did not deserve power Dr. Oberfohren, the Nationalist Parliamentary leader, said yesterday at Cologne, “This Government will remain, whatever the result of the elections. There will be no change in the present coalition.

One finds among individual Nazis the conviction that they are to he absorbed into a national militia after the elections. Tlie unfortunate Republican and Socialist Reichsbanner, which has been

trving to curry favor with the militarists by a sudden enthusiasm for compulsory military service, was to have given nit exhibition of its prowess in “martial sports” this afternoon at Tegel, but this was forbidden. The new rulers do not desire competition in this field.—London Times.