Evening star., 1938-02-08
Elm Feste Burg.

Nominally it is single courageous
Protestant clergyman who is now in the
prisoners dock at Berlin on charges of
sedition. But it is far more than the
Reverend Martin Niemoeller that is on
trial. The real issue is religious freedom
IN Hltlerlzed Germany-the actual cul-
prit, the Nazi regime and the neo-
paganism with which it would supplant
Christianity. Pastor Niemoeller's high
crime and misdemeanor is his insistence
that God-fearing Germans have
spiritual allegiance which it is beyond
the province of any man-made govern
ment or political system to challenge,
curtail or control. Because the former
submarine commander, who started out
after the World War as an enthusiastic
supporter of the Nazi cult, but aban-
doned it when the party forsook its
pledge to protect Christian dogma, had
the hardihood to oppose Hitlerisms
ruthless crusade against the church, he
Is now accused of the most heinous Of
tense a citizen can commit-treason to
the state.
The court prosecution Of this modern
Savonarola at the end Of seven months
imprisonment turns the world search
light on the warfare which Nazidom has
waged on all faiths-Jewish, Protestant
and Catholic, in turn. No chapter OF
medieval persecution of the Christian
martyrs rivals in refined relentlessness
the rigor with which Hitler, Goebbels,
Rosenberg, Streicher and the other
theological fanat* of the Third Reich
have sought to stamp out all creeds and
their exponents, men and women alike,
who subscribe to the doctrine that hu-
mans relations with his God is a matter
for the individual and for church freed
OF all limitations on the teaching of its
gospel, and not the concern of political
Sealots intoxicated with the exuberance
Of rabid racialism.
BY the irony Of fate, If not by delib-
crate design, Pastor Neimoeller is hailed
before his judges at the very moment
Der Fuehrer has purged the German
army and foreign affairs administration
OF all elements suspected Of opposition
to their complete Naziication. The trial
will draw civilizations attention afresh
to the insensate autocracy now in
trenched at Berlin. Decision to hear the
case behind closed doors, despite the
accused's bitter protest that the treason
charge is utterly baseless, will not in
cline international opinion-or, doubt
less, opinion even in Germany-to be-
Ieve that Herr Niemoeller faces iude-
ment in tribunal entitled to be called a
court of justice.
Like that other famed German
churchman, Martin Luther, who also
dared the right in the name of con-
science. Martin Niemoeller is neither
long-suffering nor humble The auto
biogra aphical narrative Of his war career,
as we'll as his struggle for religious free
dom. stamps him as the very antithesis
OF that mawkishness and effeminacy
which the Nazis ascribe to Christianity
as attributes which render it unfit for
race of heroes" Before he leaves the
dock, whether vindicated or condemned,
DR.. Niemoeller is likely to plant be-
meath the rocking Nazi ship of state
depth charges equal in destructiyeness
to the deadly torpedoes he launched so
often from the U-67 during Germany's
submarine campaign.
1t would not be surprising if the in
QUESTION at Berlin were to have
cataelysmic effects upon the NaM edifice
shown by events of the past four DAYS
to be anything but tower of unity and
strength.