The death of the Vossische Zeitung, after two hundred years
of life, actually took place last Saturday. The way of the independent paper—and the V ossische never sacrificed its independence—has become not merely hard but very nearly impossible in Germany. The Vossische's well-known editor, Georg Bernhard, had to leave his country immediately after the advent of Herr Hitler to power, and is now, I believe, editing an anti-Nazi German paper in Paris. There remain, among papers still claiming some semblance of inde- pendent outlook, the Berliner Tageblatt and the Frank- furter Zeitung. The Frankfurter has been particularly skilful in avoiding collision with the new regime without becoming subservient to it, and its circulation is, I understand, increasing. The Tageblatt, now to be edited by Germany's most experienced foreign corre- spondent, Paul Scheffer, well known successively in Moscow, Washington and London, will, I fancy, show less resistance to Gleichshaltung. And for objective news about what is happening in their own country Germans must still buy foreign papers.
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