2 AUGUST 1935, Page 2

Persecution in Germany The new wave of Jew-baiting and church-baiting

in Germany is a very ugly and terrible thing. One can allow for such intolerance in a struggling movement, such as the Nazi movement once was ; one can understand it, too, in the first intoxication of a sudden and over- whelming victory. It is much less comprehensible and excusable in a movement which has established itself and been in office for 2f years. Yet it seems to be from the top, not from the bottom, that the new intolerance comes. Lawless violence against Jews is reported from time to time, but it is the legal violence—the cold- blooded official determination to drive them, for instance, out of trade after trade—that strikes one as worst. And the persecution of the churches, whether Evangelical or Roman Catholic, seems likewise to be mainly a matter of official aggression. It is suggested that only by such methods can the Ftihrer keep the fighters of his party in good heart. If so, the worse for his party, but we cannot believe it.

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