News of the Week
F' HE situation in Germany is more critical than ever as result of the death sentences passed at Beuthen on Monday on five Nazis who had broken into the house of a Communist named Pietzuch; pulled him out of bed and kicked him to death with such brutality that, apart from other injuries, his carotid artery was severed. The prosecution was the first to be undertaken under the new emergency decree drafted for the repression of acts of terrorism, and if a reprieve is granted by the Prussian Government, which to-day is practically identical with the Government of the Reich, the whole decree may be regarded as having become a dead letter at the dictation of the Nazis. Execution of the sentence might on the other hand plunge Germany into civil war, for Herr Hitler and his followers have worked themselves over the Beuthen affair into a frenzy of protest which threatens to abandon all restraints. There are one or two possible lines of compromise. The ringleader might be executed and his companions have their sentences commuted to imprison- ment, or a new trial, for which the procedure of the decree makes provision if fresh evidence is forthcoming, might be ordered. But unless the judges, who in the first trial showed great courage, suddenly abdicate their functions the result -is -likely, to be the same. In any event all possibility of Nazi co-operation with the von Papen Government is at an end, the Government being thus left with less than forty supporters in a Reichstag of over 600.
