Adam's Apples

Austrians became worried to the point of panic last week, when they suddenly read in their papers that Chancellor Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg had not only slipped out of Austria without warning but was actually conferring in Bavaria with Adolf Hitler and new German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop at the mountain snuggery of the Fuhrer.

The Austrian people have been prevented for six years by their constitution from having a nationwide election. This has been because Austria's firm Catholic leaders think, although they may be wrong, that at the polls there would be rather better than a bare majority of votes for installing an Austrian Nazi Cabinet which in turn would merge Austria with Germany. Given last week this situation of pent-up Austrian politics, given Herr Hitler's need of a spectacular success to cap his crackdown on the German Army fortnight ago, and given Herr von Ribbentrop's reputation for sticking at nothing, only one thing more was needed to make Adam's apples bob in Austrian throats. Also at the snuggery, panicky Austrians learned, was the German who was suspected in the U. S. during the War of implication in the Black Tom explosion, the master schemer and intrigant German Ambassador to Austria Franz von Papen.

The process by which Austrians began to breathe easier this week was progressive, .logical. They learned that Premier Mussolini, who is not anxious to have Germany swarm into Austria and thus jostle Italy, had inspired Dr. Schuschnigg's hurried visit to Herr Hitler. They reflected that in Jesuit-trained, rock-pious and astute Dr. Schuschnigg they have a Chancellor who could and would stand up persuasively to potent, mystic, unstable Dictator Hitler. News from London seemed to indicate chances brightening for a British-German-French-Italian understanding to uphold territorial Europe's status quo. Finally the Austrian people this week found Austrian Nazis wild with rage "at secret reports to them from Germany which those Nazis said mean that "Hitler has betrayed us!"

The quiet return to Vienna of discreet Dr. Schuschnigg left much to be learned about what he and Herr Hitler had said to each" other, but Viennese this week thought the two Chancellors had laid the larger issue of merging Austria with Germany on the shelf to make a deal on lesser but vital points. It was said that Dr. Schuschnigg, an ardent Monarchist, had agreed to do nothing to better the chances of Archduke Otto to :obtain the Austrian Throne, while Herr Hitler agreed to force the Austrian Nazis again to curb their recently much increased activities (TIME, Feb. 7). On this point Dr. Schuschnigg reputedly showed that he has documentary proofs of German financing and instigation of plots against his Government by Austrian Nazis recently arrested. In return for a reputed pledge by Hitler to squelch Austrian Nazi violence, Schuschnigg reputedly pledged not to flaunt his evidence of German guilt before the world and to amnesty the Austrian Nazis now in jail, may even take an Austrian Nazi into his Cabinet. None of this did the Austrian people know officially for sure, but they had their Adam's apples again under control.

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