15 MARCH 1935, Page 6

The report that Pastor Niemoeller, the former U4roat commander who

now fills the pulpit of the leading church in the fashionable Berlin suburb of Dahlem, and was arrested for reading a manifesto against the pagan "German Faith Movement" last Sunday, seems to lack confirmation. The vogue this sailor-preacher (a kind of twentieth-century John Newton) enjoys is enormous. A friend of mine recently attended his church on a Sunday morning. Arriving forty minutes . early he just got one of the few remaining seats. Then the doors were shut, and the crowds still streaming up had to content themselves with another sermon in the Church Hall. The sermon was purely evangelical, and made no reference to current controversies. Religion in Germany survives all the despotism exercised in its name.