Rewards

Year ago not only the foreign Press but hundreds of intelligent observers in Germany honestly believed that the Junker Government of General von Schleicher and Col. von Papen had definitely ended the growth of Hitlerism in Germany. Anxious not to repeat the same mistake, observers have this year watched the fight of little Chancellor Dollfuss of Austria against Naziism with marked scepticism. They know that Austria's 6,500,000 are still nearly 50% pro-Nazi. They know that as a matter of prestige Adolf Hitler, who once roamed the streets of Vienna hungry, is willing to spend time and money out of all proportion to Austria's real value to Germany to set up a Nazi Government on the Ringstrasse. The Schleicher-von Papen coalition failed because they could give the German people no real accomplishment to oppose the rosy promises of Hitlerism. Last week square-jawed little "Millimetternich" Dollfuss brought home to his people several good fat slices of bacon.

Benito Mussolini provided the bacon. Until the middle of last week Chancellor Dollfuss would let out no specific word of what occurred last fortnight when II Duce, in a dripping bathing suit, sat in a rowboat with him beyond the beach at Riccione (TIME, Aug. 28). He would only smile rosily at Hearst Correspondent Karl von Wiegand and say:

"It is a pleasure to negotiate with a man like Mussolini. Er ist sehr, sehr angenehm!"

Now came the news: Italy was willing to back the Dollfuss Government to the following extent:

1) Italy will set aside for Austria a free zone in the port of Trieste.

2) Austria will have the opportunity of buying or building a merchant fleet, which with Trieste as its home port will put the red & white ensign on the seas again.

3) Italy will grant special preference to Austrian imports.

4) Italy promises to swap fruit and olive oil for Austrian timber and machinery, and put this section of the agreement into immediate effect by signing a large order for Austrian lumber last week, ordering $100,000 worth of drilling machinery to help her ceaseless search for petroleum in Italy and Albania.

There were good things in the bag for Hungary, too. After the signing of an Austro-Hungarian agreement to swap Hungarian wheat for Austrian wood, Italy announced that she too would buy her surplus wheat from Hungary. Repeated rumors came from Paris and London that France and Britain were also about to reward the little Chancellor by lifting quota restrictions against Austrian goods. The beginnings of world recovery allowed the Vienna Chamber of Commerce to announce last week that Austria's foreign trade, though still far from healthy, was definitely better.

Just over the Bavarian border a tangible threat to Austria's safety exists in the form of 6,000 to 8,000 Austrian Nazi "exiles," living in German camps, drilling with German rifles. Millimetternich's next move was to lessen this danger by mobilizing 1,000 members of the Hilfspolizei (Assistant Police) and sending them to reinforce the present border guards. The Hilfspolizei are specially picked members of the officially unarmed anti-Nazi Heimwehr who have been armed and enrolled in the national government. Because of South Austrian murmurings that the Tyrol was playing too large a part in Heimwehr affairs, this latest draft was chosen from all districts of Austria.

Germany's rebuttal was to hold two monster Nazi demonstrations, one near the Polish border on the battlefield of Tannenberg, the other near the French border at quiet little Rudesheim on the Rhine. By roaring 600 mi. across Germany in a fast plane. Handsome Adolf was able to appear and speak at both. At Tannenberg he presented to Old Paul von Hindenburg a tract of land adjacent to his Neudeck home; at Rudesheim he whooped it up for the Saar plebiscite of 1935 which may return the Saar Basin to Germany.

Whether or not Old President Paul is still opposed to Hitlerism no man knows. But everyone knows that the Nazi Government is now definitely opposed to the restoration of the Hohenzollerns. In accepting his gift, the old Field Marshal bowed his white head and said:

"At this moment I am thinking with reverence, fidelity and gratitude of my Kaiser, the King and Lord, in this hour when I am thinking also of my deceased comrades-in-arms."

At the moment when the Nazi legions were marching to the East and to the West, at the moment when Benito Mussolini was watching his troops practice protecting northern Italy. Premier Edouard Daladier of France went to Metz to inspect a 125-mile section of the chain of secret underground fortresses and tunnels that will soon protect the French frontier from Belgium to the Swiss Alps. This section took five years to build, cost $100,000,000. Said M. Daladier:

"The shield is in place. It is of good metal. The country has reason to be calm and resolute. . . . We have the right to make sure of our own liberty which is all the more respected, when it is known that we are capable of guaranteeing it.

"We must also see that decisions of the regular organs of European life, the League of Nations and the Hague Court are observed and upheld. Those organs have notably proclaimed and defined the political and economic independence of Austria. We are resolved to guarantee that independence."

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