The German Churches It is unfortunately now clear enough that,
as the Principal of Mansfield suggested in our correspondence columns last week, the hopes raised by Herr Kerrl's ambiguous speech of a fortnight ago regarding the Government and the Churches in Germany had no justification. The Churches are to be free, but in the narrowest and most cramping sense. Any activity which is not on the strictest interpretation purely spiritual will be prohibited, and the Protestant Churches in Germany are to exist under the sway of Herr Kerrl, working through a subordinate closely identified with the essentially Nazi German Christian Church. On the financial side it is darkly hinted that the more trustworthy politically the Churches show themselves the more generous will the State be to them in the matter of subsidies. It appears, moreover, that however a child may have been brought up he will have, on becoming adult, to declare publicly to which religious community he desires to belong. The dangers of making a public choice distasteful to the Party or the State are obvious. When it is added that no move has been made either to release or to bring to trial Dr. Niemoller and the many other pastors now under arrest it is clear that there is no ground for believing that the outlook for the Confessional Church is in any way more propitioui.
