Eyes East

Eastern Europe's eyes last week were on onetime Kaiser Wilhelm II's former hunting lodge Rominten and upon Memel. Master of Rominten today is Germany's No. 2 Nazi, beefy General Hermann Wilhelm Goring, great friend of beefy Field Marshal Julius Combos, Premier of Hungary. One morning last week the Premier, who characteristically has Hungarian soldiers punished by flogging, climbed into an airplane sent by General Goring to fetch him. Soaring from Hungary to East Prussia, Premier Combos alighted to find Hunt Host Goring surrounded by German and Polish officials including the rabidly anti-Soviet chairman of the Polish Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, Prince Radziwill.

Ensued no great hunt but an extremely vital three-power conference on the situation created when Soviet Russia made a pact with the Czechoslovak Republic under which, if Russia is attacked, Red planes will be able to operate from Czech bases within striking distance of Germany and Poland (TIME, May 27). The Rominten conference last week was tentative and ultra hush-hush, but Eastern European wiseacres assumed that on the fire was a German-Polish-Hungarian air pact sure to enrage Moscow and of fateful significance in Vienna, where Austria's government keeps wondering just how long it will be before Adolf Hitler begins throwing his weight about in the country of his birth, Austria.

With General Goring, who is also Premier of Prussia and German Air Minister, attending to Poland and Hungary, Realmleader Hitler himself attended to Lithuania last week. This new Republic seized Memel from beaten Germany after the War. The old frontier between Tsarist Russia and Kaiserish Germany ran along the edge of Memel through what is now Lithuania. Last week the 80,000 Memelanders were to elect 29 Deputies to the pigmy Parliament of their minuscule semi-autonomous Territory. Nothing was at stake except German prestige, for Adolf Hitler had resolved that the 1932 Memel election record in which about 80% of the votes went to German candidates must be bettered. In his recent Nazi Convention speech at Nurnberg the Realmleader loudly electioneered for German candidates in Memel (TIME Sept 23). Last week phonograph records of this speech were broadcast by German stations in such fashion that most Memel voters thought Orator Hitler was exhorting them in person. Up & down the Territory Nazi agents whisper-campaigned, "Hitler is coming! Heads will roll. Vote German! You don't want your house burned down."

Further pressure on Memelanders (mostly farmers and fishermen) has been much exerted by Memel Germany, produce, which by used closing to the buy Fatherland's frontier to Lithuania and therefore to Memel. Still honking in the territory are 100,000 geese which other wise would have been bought and eaten by Germans. Incessantly Nazis suggest to Memelanders that they will be economically ruined unless they become part of Germany and that the first step toward that is "Vote German!"

Because Memel has the world's most complex electoral system, each of the 29 seats had to be voted for on a separate ballot by each of Memers 80,000 voters, making over 2,000.000 ballots. These had to be lugged to Kaunas, the Government seat, and there counted this week in an orgy of embittered tabulation. As the voting day was about to close, with thousands of Memelanders unable to vote because those ahead of them had required so much time to mark the hundreds of thousands of ballots, fierce riots broke out and in some districts polling boxes were ripped open, ballots destroyed. With the situation ripe for a possible uprising or Nazi coup, stanch Lithuanian Premier Juozas Tubelis in an emergency Cabinet session took the statesmanlike step of ordering a second day of balloting. Asked what bantamweight Lithuania would do if attacked by turkeyweight Germany, Premier Tubelis snapped: "Necessarily my country would mobilize and employ her uttermost forces."

Adolf Hitler's reply to this was to cross the Polish Corridor by train for the first time and, with high officers of the German General Staff, inspect East Prussian defenses adjoining Memel.

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