German Saddle Burrs

Do not despair, brave Norwegians! Your land shall be cleansed, not only from the invader, but from the filthy quislings who are his tools!

The promise made last summer was Winston Churchill's. Last week's reports from German-occupied Norway indicated plainly that it had fallen on fertile ground, for the tough little country was swept by a new wave of sabotage and open defiance.

Britain's Commando raids may have been undertaken partly as morale builders, but Haakon VII's German-hating subjects seem sold on the theory that Commando forays are preludes to an Allied invasion of Europe. Norse cooperation with the raiding parties is so flagrant that homes of persons identified with these invading shock troops are burned, their male relatives arrested.

German occupation authorities recently made wholesale arrests of former Norse military men, fumed impotently over knowledge that the best military brains were already in London with the Free Government-in-Exile, there to plot further Commando raids. In Stavanger eleven Norwegians were executed, including Carl Oftedal, a doctor,Thomas Fjermestad, a bookkeeper, Georg Fjellberg, a smith. Said Free Norway's crack little U.S. news service, which has uncannily accurate underground contacts with the homeland: "[The charges are] believed to be espionage and sabotage. . . ."

One "filthy quisling" --the one with a capital Q --was reported to be a casualty. A Moscow report said that Vidkun Quisling had been wounded by an assassin. A London story held that the Norse renegade was so ill that his duties had been passed on to his Minister of Internal Affairs. From Oslo came an authenticated story which summed up all Norway : Sverre Riisnaes, Vidkun Quisling's Minister of Justice, who is known to Free Norwegians as "Quisling's Donald Duck," informed an un-Nazified Oslo attorney that his license to practice law had been "revoked for life." The answer was a fish-eyed stare, the bland query: "Whose life?"

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