Snooks Cocked

Many Britons were growing restive last week at what they called the surprising recent behavior of German officials in "cocking snooks" (thumbing noses) at His Majesty's Government.

Minister-President Hermann Wilhelm Goring cocked his large snook last month in Berlin to roar: "Our colonies have been stolen from us! ... Britain has one-third of the world as her colonies. . . . Also our gold has been stolen from us!"

Minister for Propaganda Paul Joseph Goebbels next cocked his small snook to call the critical rejoinders of some British editors to General Goring "impudent and insulting." Following these leads from Goring and Goebbels, the Nazi Press almost unanimously cocked snooks at Britain last week, a surprising example being that set by the usually polite financial organ Berliner Boersen-Zeitung, which suddenly declared: "The British embezzled what Germany paid in Reparations!"

Final snook of the German week to be cocked was that of Finance Minister Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk. Replying to a speech in which British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden recently said that Germany in the period of Reparations borrowed 18 billion marks and paid less than eight billion, the Count by implication called Mr. Eden a liar. "The losses Germany suffered through tribute," roared Count Schwerin von Krosigk, "far exceeded the capital lent us!"

More than a snook was cocked at the British Navy last week when the German Navy officially admitted for the first time that it is secretly building a warship of the largest size, the Ersatz Hannover of 35,000 tons. This will be the Fatherland's first fullsize capital ship since the Great War. Two days after the Ersatz Hannover was officially announced, Berlin's semi-official military weekly sprang the further revelation that yet another 35,000-tonner will be rushed to completion to help cock the German national snook.

Finally the snook of Adolf Hitler was cocked at all Europe this week as Der Fuehrer announced that Germany considers no longer valid that part of the Treaty of Versailles which, as not many non-Europeans still remember, vests control of all the principal German rivers in the hands of International Commissions. By tearing up this page of the tattered Treaty, Herr Hitler did nothing of immediate practical effect but Central European countries like Czechoslovakia, much of whose goods passes over German rivers, took Der Fuehrer's move as an act of derisive menace corresponding exactly to cocking a snook.

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