WAR & PEACE: Spies and Dies

WAR & PEACE

One of the problems which furrow the brow of patient Secretary of State Cordell Hull is what to do about official Nazi representatives in the U. S. The activities of two underlings have been so brazen that he has had to boot them out.* But Mr. Hull has to be careful when he kicks, lest he break the already taut cord of diplomatic relations with Hitler. U. S. representatives would then in turn be booted out of Germany, and the U. S. be deprived of one of its few remaining listening posts in Europe. The zeal of the Dies Committee has not made Mr. Hull’s life any easier in this regard. Next to rooting up Reds, what Chairman Dies likes better than anything else is rooting up Nazi spies.

The Hull brow took a deeper furrow last week. In big black type the New York Post said Dies Committee evidence showed that Friedhelm Drager, German Vice Consul in New York, is the head of a vast Nazi propaganda and espionage machine operating in the U. S. Deep and dark as an Oppenheim thriller was the story which the Post spread across its pages:

» Dr. Friedrich E. Auhagen, former Columbia University professor, who was arrested as he was about to flee to Japan, had squealed, named taciturn, square-faced Drager as the mastermind. Dies Committee raids on German organization offices had produced confirming evidence.

» Under Drager, a sinister NSDAP (foreign division of the National Socialist Party) had divided the U. S. into districts in which various German consulates carried on secret and subversive plots.

Showing no surprise over these revelations, Chairman Martin Dies next day trumpeted that there were 300,000 fifth columnists in the U. S. Industry was honeycombed with potential saboteurs, he said, and ominously predicted an outbreak any day of incidents like the “recent Hercules Powder explosion in New Jersey” —unless the Federal Government took steps.

This week Chairman Dies delivered an ultimatum: the State Department would take immediate action against Nazi consuls, or he would hold public hearings which would involve not only German but Italian and British diplomats as well.

Mr. Hull, swearing anxiously under his breath, said he had referred all Dies Committee material to the Department of Justice. Besides that, all he knew was what he read in the papers.

*Trade Counselor Gerhardt Alois Westrick, Assistant Manhattan Consul Friedrich Ried.