Ignoble Experiment

Oslo's two biggest buildings, the Oddfellow Building* and the Corn Monopoly Building, last week were getting new tenants, busy German bureaucrats and the men of the Gestapo. On hand for the move was ferret-faced Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler himself, on a flying inspection trip from Germany. Thus, after a year, ended an ignoble experiment--the fumble-footed attempt of Major Vidkun Quisling to govern the country he betrayed.

A willing but inept stooge, Quisling's blurred carbon copy of the Nazi Party, the Nasjonal Samling has done its best to rule Norway by typical steel-and-sugar Nazi methods: the threat of terrorism, the promise that Norway would be ruled by Norwegians. Both have failed. Party rallies have led to more riots than enthusiasm, and a running undercurrent of sabotage, noncooperation, attacks on Nazis and spying by free-minded Norwegians has done much to undermine the morale of German troops stationed there.

Last week Major Quisling and his Party were in little better case than their unfortunate countrymen. As German officials moved in, Nazi Commissioner Josef Terboven issued a decree divorcing the Samling and the State, provided that in the future the Party should pay its own way, even declared that Quisling's Storm Troopers should dig down for their own railway fares. The Nazis also demanded that the Samling pay back 500,000 kroner ($115,000) taken from the State treasury for Party use.

With a small membership, no popular support, no subsidy for its newspaper, Fritt Folk, it looked last week as though the Samling would starve to death. It also seemed that the Nazis had written another definition for "quisling" into the dictionary. A synonym for "traitor" in many languages, it now means "sucker" as well.

* A potent group in Oslo business life, the Odd Fellows built a handsome building five years ago to house their lodge rooms, offices, a restaurant, a movie theater.

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