Traveler v. Fiihrer

Hitler is merely an ex-guttersnipe, a mediocre little man with a mediocre mind, acting just as any fanatical, substandard person would act. . . . The fool cannot even see that he is destroying himself and his people. . . . Hitler is just a dirty gutter fighter. . . . We should set American science to work devising the most hellish instruments of defense the mind can conceive. . . . If a beneficent God, as we believe, cast an archangel into eternal fire, why should we be choosy about what we may have to do to Hitler the Horrible and his horde?

A gaunt, cadaverous, Irish Catholic editorialist, hunched over a typewriter in the office of the Boston Traveler, pounded out these words with satisfaction one morning last fortnight, handed them to a copy boy, sent them on their way to the composing room. Then acid-tongued Joe Toye, 50 years old, with 34 years of news experience behind him, went out to lunch in high good humor.

The Traveler, founded in 1825, is Bos ton's biggest afternoon paper (circulation 210,000), but it is not renowned for its editorial vigor. In the normal course of events, a few stanch followers of the Traveler's, editorial page would have nod ded their heads over Joe Toye's diatribe, and that would have been that. But City Editor Horton Edmands, one day last week, found in his mail a letter of protest from the German Consulate in Boston.

Said Adolf Hitler's Boston envoy, over the signature of Kurt Bohme: "This Con sulate has read the editorial . . in which the head of a nation, with whom the United States of America entertains dip lomatic relations, is insulted in such un civilized expressions, that this Consulate in the future must refuse to give your paper any information in whatever matter it may be."

Press Relations. Kurt Bohme is assistant to the Consul in Boston. Head of the Consulate, who presumably dictates its policies, is a six-foot, hefty, blond young Nazi socialite, Dr. Herbert Scholz, reputedly a onetime member of Hitler's personal bodyguard. He was for a while first secretary of the German Embassy in Washington (in charge of press relations), then German Consul in New Orleans, before he went to Boston in 1938. As Consul in Boston, one of his first acts was to move his office from the dowdy building it then occupied in the business district, take over a handsome brick home on Beacon Hill, where he discreetly entertains Boston's Brahmin elect.

Dr. Scholz uttered a protest once before, when the Traveler, in a syndicated story by Washington Columnist Harlan Miller, hinted that he had tried in vain to crash Washington society. The Traveler apologized. Last week it looked as if Consul Scholz had protested once too often.

Editor Edmands took one look at the Consul's letter. Without more ado, he slapped the letter into bold type, printed it on page i. Managing Editor Harold F. Wheeler dashed off an indignant wire to Washington. On the editorial page of the Traveler, Joe Toye reprinted the offending editorial. Next day he added: "Hitler 'is insulted in uncivilized expressions.' So what?"

By week's end, the case of the Consul's letter was a cause celebre. In Washington, some half-dozen New England Congressmen, three Senators rose to defend the freedom of the press. Representative John E. Casey announced that an agent of the Dies Committee was on his way to Boston to investigate the Nazi Consulate's un-American activities.

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