Nazi Merger

Before club-footed little Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels became Adolf Hitler's Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, he used to say that nothing was so good for a hostile editor as "one litre of castor oil." Lately Minister Goebbels' methods have grown less rudimentary. Last autumn, he "consecrated"' the German Press to Nazi service with a law that made it a crime to practice journalism in Germany except as a member of a nation-wide closed shop. Last week, Nazi control of the Press went one step further when it was announced that Germany's two biggest news services, the Telegraphen-Union and Wolff's Telegraph Bureau, had merged because of ''recent economic developments in the German Press."

These two German news services correspond only superficially to the Associated Press and the United Press in the U. S. Wolff's, owned by the Continental Telegraphen-Compagnie and controlled by Berlin's banking firm of S. Bleichroeder, has like France's Havas Service long been conducted as a semi-official Government organ. It served about 600 German papers, belonged to the cartel of international services which exchange news only among themselves. . . . The Associated Press is the U. S. member of this group. The Telegraphen-Union, serving 1,600 German papers, with 90 editors and some 2,000 correspondents, was considered to have even more complete coverage in Germany. In towns with two competing papers. T. U. had a subsidiary to rewrite its dispatches so that both papers could use them. It was owned by Dr. Alfred Hugenberg, "Germany's Hearst," who went into journalism after the War during which he had functioned as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Krupp Munitions Works.

The T. U., a string of newspapers which included four in Berlin (Lokal-Anzeiger, Der Tag, Der Montag, Berliner Nachtausgabe), an advertising agency and Germany's No. 1 Cinema Studio, UFA, gave Dr. Hugenberg a tight hold on German public opinion. Through T. U. he deluged the provincial Press with his own brand of propaganda. Since ousting him from the Cabinet last June the Hitler Government has regarded Dr. Hugenberg as a potential enemy, suspected him of favoring a restoration of the Hohenzollerns. Yet one surprising thing about last week's merger was that the new organization, which will be officially a private corporation called the German News Bureau, was permitted to select as its head the man who has run T. U. since Hugenberg took it over in 1921, blond, heavyset, affable Otto Mejer. Chosen on his merits as a newsgathering executive, Herr Mejer is known to be a stanch Nationalist.

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