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Weimar Obsequies. Last week Junker von Gayl officiated at the strangest birthday party the German Republic has had in its 13 hard-pressed years. As Minister of the Interior he was expected to make the leading address at the annual celebration of the adoption of the Weimar Constitution. It was his duty and he did it. In the Reichstag chamber a polite audience of diplomats, generals, bureaucrats and their wives gazed at a platform banked with mournful purple hydrangeas. Minister von Gayl never once mentioned the word "republic" and to the Weimar Constitution, object of the ceremony, he tossed the following lemon:
"This Weimar Constitution is the only house the German people have to live in and it has proved to be woefully inadequate. The Constitution needs revision." He suggested four amendments: 1) Establishing an Upper House on the model of the U. S. Senate. 2) Raising the voting age. 3) Revising the proportional system to reduce the number of political parties. 4) Reforming the structure of the Reich to bring about complete harmony between the Reich and Prussian governments. Right Wing papers flatly headlined their stories: LAST CONSTITUTION DAY.
Velvet Glove, There are two ways to play the Dictator. One may adopt the thundering voice and the imperial scowl like Benito Mussolini and his unsuccessful imitator Adolf Hitler, or one may pull the wires of diplomacy with the velvet gloves of a Metternich or Machiavelli. Soft-spoken General von Schleicher prefers velvet gloves. He still smiles and tells jokes, likes to stand shyly in the back row in group photographs of the Cabinet. He dislikes announcements and interviews. Last week when cornered by the New York Times Correspondent Frederick T. Birchall he was careful to doff his uniform for a grey sack suit and a most pacific necktie. Mild as milk were his answers to Correspondent Birchall's written questions:
"I object to the Reichswehr being thrown into the struggle of internal politics. That I reject any sort of political dictatorship I made clear in my recent radio talk. . . . Can the outside world expect the German people to be content with existing conditions? On the contrary there is reason for wondering that the German people bear their terrible distress so calmly and with such discipline. ... A country treated for 13 years as a pariah by the outside world simply had to forfeit the respect of its own people."
Handling Hitler. In von Schleicher's devious plans for rebuilding a German army before attempting a monarchist coup, Adolf Hitler and his 400,000 drilled brownshirts loomed large. As General von Schleicher announced fortnight ago, "Such a movement must be made use of"