People's Augurs

Strangest aspect of the world since it came under the spell of Adolf Hitler is its uncertainty: the whimsical nature of events as they unravel from the Fuehrer's haunted mind. Even heads of governments nowconsult the writings of journalists like Pertinax, Augur, Tabouis, who are reputed to have secret sources of knowledge about things to come. But common men look for guidance where they have always found it: in the stars.

Astrology had a boom, in British newspapers last week as fearful readers pored over their paper prophets, hoping to foresee how the war would go. Most of them had heard the rumor that Adolf Hitler himself keeps a staff of five astrologers (TIME, July 24), who told him months ago that September would bring the climax of his career. If astrology had started Europe's war, Britons reasoned, surely astrologers could predict its course.

Most popular of London's oracles is Old Moore, who writes for the Sunday Dispatch. Of him, Prime Minister Neville

Chamberlain said last summer: "Can we look forward to the future with any confidence? ... I think I should advise you to go and consult Old Moore, because he is quite as likely to be right as I am." Old Moore's Almanack has appeared every year since 1697. Only the author and publishers know who Old Moore is today.

Old Moore predicted the exact month in which the British General Strike would begin: May 1926. He foretold Anschluss between Germany and Austria a year in advance. Nevertheless, last month in the Sunday Dispatch Old Moore said flatly: "During August . . . there is no doubt that Mr. Chamberlain will steer the Ship of

Peace through the troubled waters safely into the harbour of tranquillity and better times." Even more confident of peace was Edward Lyndoe in The People: "Anyone who listens to, and believes, this War-by-the-end-of-August rubbish is beyond hope." In the Sunday Chronicle Petulengro said: "News from Germany will again cause concern, but the planets ruling this country will smooth over the difficulties."

Only astrologer of World War I still living is R. H. Naylor, who predicted the war two years before it happened, said it would last approximately four years. He introduced astrology to London's press in 1930, now enjoys what is said to be the biggest private practice in England. This time Naylor, writing for the Sunday Express, was too cautious to foretell war or peace. But last week he gave his opinion of war's outcome: "It will end suddenly and for reasons no man can know or foresee. The centre of government will shift to Canada eventually."

In the U. S. a Broadway columnist, Danton Walker of the New York Daily News, reported his interview with an unnamed astrologer. Said Walker's oracle of Adolf Hitler: "His chart clearly shows him to be in the ever-tightening grip of a mental disorder. Neptune, the planet of imprisonment, treachery, insanity, assassination and suicide, is in his house of death."

Bible of all astrologers is the French prophet Nostradamus, who died in 1566, leaving behind him a book of cryptic verses supposedly predicting (among other great events) the rise of Oliver Cromwell, the Great Fire of London in 1666, the revolt of Britain's American colonies. Nostradamus wrote: "The Chief of Fossan will have his throat cut. . . ." Said Columnist Walker's Astrologer: "Transpose fossan and you get OSSANF, the initials of Hitler's title, Oberster Sturm-Scharen-Anfuehrer."*

Latest rumor in Europe's capitals was that Adolf Hitler had gone off to the front (after naming his successors) because his own astrologers had told him he would be killed in the first month of war.

*But the title usually applied to Hitler before he became Chancellor was Oberster S. A. Fuehrer, which contracts to OSAF.

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