23 FEBRUARY 1934, Page 2

Still Imprisoned In commenting, at the end of December,. on

the verdict of the Supreme Court, at Leipzig, on the Reichstag Fire prisoners, The Spectator described it as " a qualified testimony to the independence of the highest court in Germany " giving reasons why. the testimony- had to' be qualified. That judgement may stand so far as the Court is concerned, but nothing the presiding judge's colleagUes may have done to reinstate German justice in the eYes, of the world can divert attention today from the scandal of the continued imprisonment of the four men acquitted of the crime charged against them. It is German administration, not German justice, on which the disgrake falls, and where the personal responsibility lies heaviest is still obscure. Herr Hitler, of eourse, is responsible ultimately, and he has just Stated in an interview that the 'prisoners will be released. General Goring, however, who openly threatened Dimitroff in court, has in another interview declared just the opposite, and the four prisoners still remain incarcerated two months now since their acquittal was pronounced. There is every desire here to -regard Germany as a country with normal standards of civilization, but the record of its government in.resord to the Reichstag prisoners makes that-singularly difficult.