Portents in Germany The critics of Nazi Germany—and of certain
aspects of Nazi Germany no normal Englishman can fail to he a critic—who are tempted to discover new symptoms of the disintegration of the regime every day would do well to reflect that precisely the same rumours and beliefs were current in the second year of Soviet rule and the second year of Fascism. The fact that Captain Rohm is taking a cure and that the S.A. is being given leave for July, as it has been given leave before, does not necessarily mean that the S.A. organization has fallen finally from favour. And though the little demonstra- tion of a Hitler Youth detachment (boys from 12 to 18) against Herr Seldte, the Stalhelm leader, may have significance, it is, a quite trivial incident in itself. The economic and financial situation is charged with much more serious consequences. The increasingly severe restrictions on the use of necessities like copper, the continuing diminution of the foreign exchange available for the purchase of raw materials, and the reduction of the Reichsbank's gold reserve to next to nothing all threaten a crisis which in ordinary cases would involve the fall of a government. But in Germany a change of government could only be effected by revolution, and it is very doubtful whether the time for a revolution in its only probable form, a military dictatorship, is ripe yet.
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