Liberty Cabbage

One morning last week Slangbanger Damon Runyon began his column: "Some folks are saying that the United States is already in the war, but we . . . have not seen a single patriot chasing a little bowlegged dachshund down the street with murderous intent,* and hamburger and Wiener Schnitzel are still on the menus. . . . We refuse to believe we are actually in. . . ."

That day was the 70th anniversary of the founding of the German Reich. From the ninth-floor San Francisco offices of Nazi Consul General Fritz Wiedemann, a big red, white and black swastika war flag was unfurled in tribute.

A crowd collected to stare, remained to mutter. A neighboring department store broke out a huge U. S. flag. Several young men climbed the fire escape to the floor above the German Consulate. A U. S. sailor wriggled down to the staff, slashed at the flag with a knife. Another sailor grabbed a fold, pulled. Nazi clerks leaned out to haul the flag to safety. The boys held on; the flag ripped across the swastika. The boys climbed down. Two riot calls brought carloads of police. The crowd cheered. The sailors were pinched. The building canceled the consulate's lease.

The German Embassy in Washington, on instructions from Berlin, protested to the State Department, which formally expressed its regrets. The sailors were tried, convicted of malicious mischief.

* Such an attack, by children, on a dachshund was reported last summer from Sioux Falls, S. Dak. (TIME, July 22).

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