Comeuppance

One day last month, at a Bavarian political convention, a long-nosed German politician delivered a scathing attack on the occupation authorities of the western zones. He ridiculed Allied imports as "chicken feed," accused the British of "pilfering," and urged sitdown strikes. Last week, Dr. Johannes Semmler got his comeuppance from the U.S. and British occupation commanders. He was summarily dismissed from his post as executive director of economics for Bizonia.

What Semmler had said was not highly important, since most of it was untrue or half true. What was more important was the responsive chord his tune had struck with Germans, eager to vent the blame for their troubles on the occupation.

In Munich, a workman told an American correspondent: "You fired him because he is the first German leader with the guts to tell the truth." Then the workman admitted that he had only the vaguest notion of what Semmler had said. A leader of the powerful Christian Social Union party sermonized: "This incident is proof that all gossip about freedom and democracy is false."

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