Foreign News: Dumb Tool?

Still on their horseshoe bench the six red-robed judges of Germany’s Supreme Court heard more evidence last week against the five men accused of firing Berlin’s Reichstag building (TIME, March 26, et seq.). Center of interest was still the dull-witted Dutch arson boy, Marinus van der Lubbe (only defendant to be kept manacled and in prison garb in the court room). Chief pain to the prosecution was still the pugnacious Bulgarian Communist Leader George Dimitroff.

The week’s big moment came when presiding Judge Wilhelm Bünger introduced the written confession of Defendant van der Lubbe made just after the Reichstag fire, led him to acknowledge it in open court. Point by point the bullet-headed Judge went over every detail of the fire. No longer laughing foolishly, Defendant van der Lubbe sat listlessly, head bowed, occasionally broke into foolish giggles. When prodded, he agreed. The story:

On the evening of the fire Marinus van der Lubbe bought packages of patented kindling coal, climbed the outside of the Reichstag building at 9 p. m. and entered a balcony window of the deputies’ restaurant. He lit one box of the kindling coal, threw it on a table behind the bar. Next he set fire to a plush curtain, a couple of table cloths and his own shirt. In the men’s washroom he had apparently no trouble in causing a pile of used towels and his own vest to burst into flames. Police testimony had shown that the main fire was started neither in the washroom nor the restaurant but in the Reichstag assembly hall. There Marinus van der Lubbe, according to his confession, ignited the bulletin board and a feather-stuffed couch.

Expert testimony had tended to show that it was impossible for Marinus van der Lubbe alone to have fired the Reichstag, as his confession insisted. Object of the prosecution was to show that the other defendants were his accomplices. Object of the defense was to show that Nazi Storm Troopers instigated and abetted Marinus van der Lubbe, so that Chancellor Hitler could win the March election on the issue of a Communist plot to seize the State.

Shrewd, fiery Defendant Dimitroff tried to trap the dull Dutchman into admitting that he acted as a Nazi tool.

“Van der Lubbe!” cried Dimitroff. “Why don’t you speak? Are you bowed with a sense of guilt because of the crime you have committed against the proletariat? . . . Who advised you, who talked to you before you set these fires? With whom did you discuss them and who were your associates?”

Bang went the heavy hand of Judge Bünger. He adjourned the Court before dull Marinus van der Lubbe could blurt out anything.

Meanwhile one of the trial’s sidelights had the attention of the world Press and the Foreign Offices of two countries. It had been announced that no Communist or Socialist newspaper men would be admitted to the long press tables of the Leipzig trial. Two Moscow correspondents, Mme Lili Keith of Izvestia and M. Ivan Bespalow of the Tass news agency, made no efforts to invade the courtroom, but set up offices in Leipzig. Nazi police raided the room, ransacked it thoroughly and hauled both writers off to the police station for hours of questioning.

Moscow acted quickly. Every Soviet correspondent was withdrawn from Germany. The four German correspondents in Moscow were given 72 hours to leave Russia. Moscow papers scare-headed “Rupture of Press Relations!” Roly-poly Maxim Litvinov, Foreign Commissar, issued a statement:

“This action was necessitated by a systematic persecution of the Soviet Press in Germany, rendering fulfillment of their functions impossible.”

The Wilhelmstrasse was worried. Ever since the anti-Red Hitler boojum began to frighten the Kremlin, France has been courting Russia, sending first Edouard Harriot (TIME, Sept. 11), then French Air Minister Pierre Cot to Moscow. Berlin last week dared antagonize Moscow no further. The Leipzig police department and the German Foreign Office hastened to send regrets.