"VorwartsmitGott!"

GERMANY

"Vorwartsmit Gott!"

Facing President Paul von Hindenburg last week was a properly baked pretzel lour feet long, a pair of suspenders brightly stitched by a little girl, several cases of "Dear Lady's Milk"* sent by an old gentleman and some 22,000 other presents, plus 1,700 cable and radiograms received on the President's 85th birthday, Oct. 2.

Taking his birthday presents as a touching text last week, Old Paul broadcast an appeal to Germans, asked them to give him at the general election Nov. 6 one more present: unified support of the Cabinet of Chancellor Franz von Papen.

"Unity of Germans has always been brought about at critical moments," boomed the President, "by the healthy spirit of Germans! "Whoever stands with me helps this spirit and gives me the happiest birthday present. Therefore--Vorwartsmit Gott!" By next morning astute campaigners for von Papen had adopted as their political slogan the President's reverent words: ''Forward with God!" This was more than many a German could stomach. If von Papen was stealing the nimbus of von Hindenburg, then revered Old Paul had himself ceased to be sacrosanct. Soon, for the first time in a German electoral campaign, the President was openly and savagely attacked. Brown-Shirt bands of Hitler Nazis (National Socialists) rushed about Berlin, sticking up everywhere posters which read: HERR PRESIDENT VOX HINDENBURG!

Why didn't you dissolve the Reichstag when the Socialists, who accepted the Young Plan, which brought the country to ruin, were in power?

Do you expect support for a government whose emergency decrees cut wages to the starvation point while it was issuing 2,500,000,000 marks in negotiable tax certificates, thereby putting 1,000,000,000 marks into the pockets of bankers and stock jobbers?

As every German knows, the President dissolved the Reichstag (TIME, Sept. 19) for fear it would vote down the President's decree cutting employes' wages and subsidizing employers by granting them tax remissions in the form of negotiable certificates. The Reichstag, after it was dissolved, voted down the President's decree 513 to 32 but von Hindenburg and von Papen successfully held this vote to be illegal. Therefore their cut-&-subsidize decree remains in force.

Last week von Papenites resumed the game of predicting that the Hitler vote has reached its maximum, asserted right & left that "Hitler's own people admit they will lose scores of seats in the election."

Meanwhile at Munich slightly potbellied "Handsome Adolf" Hitler stroked his tuft of brown mustache, took the salutes of his campaign committeemen who cheered themselves hoarse, then gravely launched his campaign: "There are two possibilities: either to give or to deny the

Nazis power. . . . The battle can commence now. In four weeks we shall be victorious--victorious! ... I predict the collapse--the total collapse--of von Papen's program and of his Government!" In Leipzig, a few days later, eminent counsel for the State of Prussia, the State of Bavaria and the State of Baden began an unprecedented suit before the German Supreme Court, claiming that Chancellor von Papen acted unconstitutionally when he, acting under a decree of President von Hindenburg, suppressed the elected Gov ernment of Prussia and replaced it by an appointed Federal Commissioner (TIME, Aug. I). Obviously this suit, which the Supreme Court is expected to decide this week, will either whitewash Herren von Hindenburg and von Papen or brand them as Constitution-breakers in the eyes of German voters.

*The famed Hessian wine Lichttransmuch.

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