3 MAY 1935, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK

DEVELOPMENTS in Germany in the past week have been such as to tempt the average Englishman to despair of any understanding between the two countries. It is not primarily the announcement of Germany's naval plans. That Herr Hitler should hold himself free to establish equality for Germany at sea as he already has on land and in the air is not astonishing, and though publica- tion of his intentions just when discussions on the whole naval question had been arranged is characteristically provocative, the States that have agreed to German equality without according it are in no very strong position diplomatically. What is far more disquieting is the manifestation, or the series of manifestations, of a temper in Germany which seems to dispel all hope of any genuine co-operation between her and nations to which liberal ideals still appeal. From three frontiers come stories of Germans being kidnapped on alien soil and dragged back to an unknown fate in the Fatherland. A new attack on the Press promises to destroy what sorry remnants of freedom the surviving papers still enjoy-ed. particular, religious dailies—chief among them the Roman Catholic Germania—will apparently be linable to exist at all. At once drugged and-blindfolded by official order Germany's sixty millions are being systematically converted into a servile host..