Evening star., 1938-06-22
Relations With Germany.

Relations With Germany.
It would be idle to deny that the
United States relations with Germany
have been steadily progressing from bad
to worse. In authoritative Washington
quarters they are described as being as
bad as at any time since the World War;
1t is easy to credit the coincident state
ment that the situation is cause for con-
Germ on both sides of the Atlantic.
Developments Of the past forty-eight
hours in this country are not designed
to improve matters which have taken
on almost chronic acerbity with the ar
rogant attitude assumed by the Reich
government on no fewer than four formal
diplomatic occasions within the brief
span Of sixty days. The Nazi foreign
once has not merely declined to make
favorable replies to State Department
communications. 1t has utterly ignored
them. The Wilhelmstrasse appears to
have adopted policy Of studied con-
tempt toward Washington's representa-
tions on such subjects as the Austrian
debts and enforced registration of the
property of American Jews in Germany.
The climax Of Hitlerian etirontery was
reached last week when Finance Minister
Walther Funk accused the United States
Of being the hell" of the economic world
and pictured Germany as the heaven.
That unconscious and heavy-handed bit
Of totalitarian humor was of less con-
sequence than Herr Funks brazen con-
tention that in taking possession Of
Austria's body and soul, her Naz de-
spoilers assumed no vestige Of RESPONSE
bility for her legally incurred and fully
acknowledged foreign obligations That
unabashed avowal Of national dishonesty,
too, is OF more moment than the ac-
companying argument that American
dollars sent to keep postwar Austria
from starvation and otherwise to resusci-
tate that decrepit nation were provided
not in any altruistic spirit, but for the
purpose Of thwarting the great political
ideal OF Anschluss with the kindly.
humane and unselhsh German neighbor.
But from the American standpoint
these various manifestations Of Nazi
sense Of honor are insignificant COM
pared to the revelations which on Mon
day resulted in the indictment at New
York by the Federal authorities acting
In concert with the Department OF
Justice. Of eighteen persons on charges
Of being spies In Germanys pay. Shades
Of the etauvial Won Papen and Boy-E Of
pre-war days are conjured up by the
fact that two of the incriminated men
are high officials Of the German air
ministry, which under General Marshal
Goering has come to be the paramount
branch OF the Nazi war machine. They
are Captain Lieutenant Udo Won BONN,
assigned to espionage affairs in Goering's
outfit at Berlin, and Captain Lieutenant
Hermann Menzel, who is similarly occu-
pied. Their accomplices in the criminal
business of ferreting out the air defense
secrets OF this supposedly friendly gov
ernment and people include Captain
Lieutenant Erich Pfeiffer. head of the
German secret service. Unfortunately
only four of the eighteen accused Nazi
henchmen are still ir this country. The
others, anticipating the present action,
betook themselves to Germany earlier in
the year, some of them in defiance of
legal measures already instituted against
them. In their case, therefore. the
Federal indictment amounts essentially
to sweeping moral condemnation of the
Reich's tactics in the enjoyment of off,
cial intercourse with a government with
which it is presumed to be at peace.
Espionage has long been an almost
recognized practice among nations both
in times of war and otherwise. A real
breach is committed generally, only when
the secret agents of some country or
other are inept enough to be caught in
the act. But the German depredations
now under scrutiny were so fragrant in
character, so transparent in nature and
so perilous to national security that no
self-respecting government could afford
to ignore them or treat them as incon-
sequential run-of of-the-mine events.
If the administration decides that
German offenses against either the ordi-
nary comfy of nations or the safety of
the Republic call for sterner action than
a routine protest to Berlin, the Presi-
dent and the Secretary of State may
count confidently on the approval and
support Of the country, fed up as it is,
to the teeth and eyebrows, with the
hhgh-handedness of Nazi diplomacy and
the shocking cruelties to which Hitler
and his sadistic crew are subjecting Ger
many's helpless Jewish community. Per-
haps before 1t is too late 1t will occur
10 tho Reich government that relations