Br

Fascists beat Communists in the Prussian Diet last week, 162 to 57. It was not a vote but a fight. The Diet adjourned immediately for redecoration and extensive repairs.

It started fairly quietly with a debate on the administration of justice in Prussia and the election of Hitlerite Hans Kerrl (who likes to refer to Adolf Hitler as "Germany's Jesus Christ") as President of the Diet. Suddenly up sprang Communist Wilhelm Pieck. Shaking his fist at the Fascist benches he screamed: "In your ranks there sit a huge number of murderers!"

That was all that was needed. Spitting on their hands, the Fascists moved in. Somebody threw a chair which knocked out a Communist. Somebody else slashed the face of neutral Social Democrat Jurgensen. Inkwells, water bottles, desk drawers, chairs, ledgers, broken table legs went into the fray. Neutral deputies fled for their lives, others marooned on the speakers' dais spent a frantic quarter of an hour ducking missiles and wringing their hands. Safe in their odds of 3 to 1, the Fascists soon drove the last Communist from the Chamber, spent the next half-hour triumphantly roaring old war songs. Prince August Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, now a Fascist Deputy, placidly watched the riot, prudently threw no inkwells.

It was the worst brawl Prussia's rowdy legislature has ever seen, but violence did not stop with the Deputies. As soon as the story leaked out, Communists and Hitlerites began punching each others' noses all over Germany. In Hamburg a mob of Communists swept down the street shouting "Hunger, Hunger!" breaking into a delicatessen store. A volley of police bullets stopped them. In Berlin a group of Hitlerites were trapped by a surly crowd in a railway tunnel, had to be rescued by police. In Cologne and at Remscheid Communist crowds did not wait to be charged, attacked the police first. At Dusseldorf the police were bombarded with crockery and potted geraniums. In Berlin a Communist crowd toured the West End, smashed windows of the Japanese Club and a Russian restaurant.

Sober German citizens had had an all too graphic picture of the parliamentary proceedings of both of Germany's extreme parties in action. Chancellor Bruening was not unduly alarmed. Next day was Corpus Christi. He marched in the religious procession (first in Berlin since the War) to the Cathedral of St. Hedwig. Strengthened by this, he buttonholed President von Hindenburg for four hours and 45 minutes three days later, tried to persuade his old patron not to admit the Fascists to a share in the Government until after the Lausanne conference in June. Meanwhile, the Chancellor planned a new legislative program to break up big Junkers' estates to provide homes for the jobless and to increase taxes by another emergency decree.

For President von Hindenburg this was too much. Under the influence of a group of German generals who have been intriguing against Chancellor Bruening for months, he decided against him and abruptly forced the resignation of his Cabinet. While the President cast about for a new protege whom he might make Chancellor, Herr Bruening was asked to continue in office ad interim.

The Bruening fall from grace was broadly attributed to two factors: 1) the large gain of the Hitlerites in the recent election; 2) the action of the Bruening Cabinet in forcibly dissolving the Hitler storm troops, an act which the patriotic generals could not stomach and which eventually turned the President against Dr. Bruening. Proclaiming: "Our hour has come!" the Fascists announced they would support no Cabinet in which they did not have a majority. Without the Hitlerites no Cabinet seemed possible unless a new Reichstag was elected. Seemingly these developments foreshadowed a new Government dominated by the Fascist Party, or a dictatorship by military leaders.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.