21 APRIL 1933, Page 1

Affairs in Germany Last week's debate in the House of

Commons on the situation in Germany produced a protest from the German Government, dictated, apparently, not so much by the speeches of Sir Austen Chamberlain and other private Members as by the fact that Sir John Simon endorsed their views. Meanwhile the harsh and the ridiculous are being indiscriminately mingled in Germany to-day. Jewish medical students (in so far as any Jews are permitted still to study medicine) are not to be allowed to dissect non-Jewish corpses. Dr. Prenn, the German lawn tennis champion, who happens to be a Jew, is no longer to represent his country in the Davis Cup contests. More disturbing, a statue has been erected on the Polish border with a provocative inscription pointing to the day when Germany will regain her lost territories. There is a good deal of the irresponsible as well as the absurd in much of this, but at the same. timq the organization of a one-party State in which no breath of opposition shall be allowed to blow is making headway. Of what Herr von Papen and Capt. Goring have been doing in Rome singularly little has been heard, but no 'develop- ments of international moment are likely in that quarter. Herr Hitler's testing-time lies still ahead. The measures his Government have taken so far have been almost wholly repressive and hardly at all con- structive. The economic situation has now to be faced in earnest.

* * *