Zoergiebel Regrets

In Berlin last week, the May Day methods of the police (TIME, May 13) were bitterly assailed. Communist sympathizers pointed out that during the four days' rioting that followed Bloody May Day. only one policeman received a bullet wound--an accidental wound inflicted by himself. Of the rioters, 27 were killed, more than 100 injured. Scores of non-Communist shopkeepers from the riotous Berlin districts said that they did not see a single civilian shoot at the police.

"It is exceedingly regrettable," said Politzerprasident Carl Zoergiebel in defense of his super-efficient policemen, "that bystanders were injured, but we must consider the viewpoint of the decent laborers who were not in the least connected with the uprising, and had the right to demand that the fire of insurrection be quenched as soon as possible." Another echo of Berlin's Bloody May Day was the reappearance in the news of Grigori Evseevich Zinoviev, famed "Bomb Boy of Bolshevism," onetime Director of the Third International, imputed author of the defamed Zinoviev letters (later proved forgeries) which caused the downfall of Ramsay MacDonald's British Labor Government (TIME, Nov. 17, 1924).

Comrade Zinoviev fell into the bad graces of the Soviet Government about the same time as did Leon Trotsky, but unlike Trotsky he crawled back into the Soviet's good graces. Devoid of power, he remained in the party; in Russia only a member of "the party" can hold office.

Last week the name of Zinoviev appeared in headlines for the first time in nearly a year. Josef Stalin, Soviet Dictator, allowed Comrade Zinoviev to sign a long article in the Moscow Pravda attacking Berlin's Chief of Police Zoergiebel.

"We promise brotherly support for the German Communists from the Communists of all the world," wrote Comrade Zinoviev. "There shall be a glorious Red Future for Germany."

According to the Zinoviev account of Berlin's May Day, it was the Social Democrats in the German Government who precipitated the police attack, not the Communists who invited it. The Social Democrats, boasted Bomb Boy Zinoviev, fear that the Communist Party is growing in Germany, fear it will get out of hand.