NEWS OF THE WEEK
I T is something of a paradox that the verysuggestiveness of the parallel between the condition of Europe in July-August, 1914, and July-August, 1934, diverts from the events of twenty years ago the attention that would "otherwise be given them. In a time of tranquillity our minds would be free to range back over those two-decades. Today the preoccupations. of the present are too insistent. The crisis. in Austria has come near plunging Europe in war. The extent of the crisis which the death of the German President may precipitate has still to be revealed. In Austria the situation is sensibly easier. In Germany the immediate future hangs more than ever on one man, Adolf Hitler, and his personality is sufficiently enigmatic, both in its essential qualities and in the development it is clearly undergoing, to make prediction futile. Constitutionally the President of the Supreme Court, Dr. Buinke, becomes Acting-President of the Reich pending a new election by the whole German people, but the Cabinet can change any such procedure at its will. Whether he decides to -become President himself (which is unlikely) or puts in a nominee, or has some new office created for him under the title of Reichsfiihrer, supreme power is likely to rest for the present with Herr Hitler. But his position has been shaken by the June shootings at Munich, and again by the Nazi defeat in Austria, and the odium which the increasing stringency of the economic situation must create as winter approaches will fall on his shoulders. The prospects for National Socialism are by no means what they were.
