ADOLF PRESENTS HIS BILL

To a Germany known to be in precarious financial straits, the assassination of a minor ambassadorial official in Paris recently was nothing less than providential. The fact that the killing was done by a Jew, which race Hitler has no qualms about persecuting, may do much to help Nazi-land meet its huge monetary obligations. The present Hitler imposition of a $400,000,00 "fine" on the German Jews is a recrimination seldom paralleled in peace-time history. Of war indemnity proportions, this "fine" represents a persecution of such concentrated and vicious nature as to arouse world-wide condemnation. Enforced by a reign of terror reported second only to that of the French Revolution, the Nazi demands show a desire to return the Jewish people to the days of the Ghetto.

To the rest of the world--for this affair is inherently international--it is obvious that no embassy attache's life is worth the staggering sum demanded. It is equally indisputable that the Jewish Germans, already bled by the Hitler regime, are in no position to pay the forfeit required, Thus, a world whose patience Hitler has frayed twice in the past year should express in terms as strong as those used in the Austrian and Czech crises its disapproval of such barbarianism. To the pleas of France and England, Hitler has already shown himself impervious. But a scowling rebuke from the United States, doctrinal defender of South America, in which Hitler has evinced a colony interest, might prove a heavy restraining hand on the Brown Shirt shoulder, for the United States is one of the few countries which must still be conciliated--not dictated to.