INTERNATIONAL: Joy Meet

To some 15,000,000 low-salaried German workers the most active and pleasurable of the Reich’s manifold organizations is the recreation-providing, culture-giving Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) Society. To 3,500,000 Italian workers membership in the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (National After-Work Organization) is a similar welcome means of getting cheap theatre and opera seats, cut-price vacations, inexpensive athletic facilities, free instruction in artistic and cultural studies.

Both these organizations are Fascism’s spectacular answer to widely-voiced democratic criticisms that under dictatorships the masses do not fare well. Both were launched to replace the highly developed social and recreation programs of the now outlawed German and Italian Leftist labor unions. As astute Propaganda Minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels once said: “A government which really wants to penetrate the people must never leave the people to themselves.”

While both societies have decided Fascist or Nazi complexions, neither plugs Party propaganda unduly. Periodically both think of themselves as part of a world-wide working people’s organization for better-spent leisure. At Berlin is located an International Central Office for Work and Joy, presided over by Dr. Robert Ley, the German Labor Front-Leader. This bureau grew out of two World Congresses for Recreation, the first in Los Angeles in 1932, the second in Hamburg in 1936. The third—with the name now changed by Dr. Ley to the World Congress for Work and Joy—was held last week in Rome.

Little work, much fun was planned for the 800 delegates of 60 countries attending this latest four-day congress. From Germany came 200 delegates, from Rumania 30, from Rightist Spain 20. The U. S. was represented—unofficially—by five delegates, chief of whom was former Track Athlete Gustavus Town Kirby, treasurer of the last U. S. Olympic committee, for 35 years chairman of the advisory Intercollegiate Athletic Association, president of the First World Congress for Recreation. Largely responsible for a big amusement program was the athletic, sporty Fascist Party Secretary Achille Starace who is also president of the After-Work Organization. One Work and Joy athletic exhibition was watched by 80,000 spectators.

There were visits to the reclaimed Pontine Marshes, Florence, Milan and the northern Italian lakes. Described to the delegates were Dopolavoro’s 1,227 theatres in which are given 25,000 performances annually, Saturday matinees with seats selling at 2½, 5¢ and 10¢. The delegates were taken to the sumptuous Dopolavoro clubhouse of the Air Force employes, and to the equally impressive railroaders’ Dopolavoro club in Rome: 100 guest bedrooms, a theatre seating 1,500 persons, a library of 7,000 volumes, a restaurant, bar, poolroom, bocci-ball court, gymnasium. Also on view were “Thespis Cars,” trucks and trailers designed to bring drama and opera to the masses. These rolling theatres are designed to play to 10,000 spectators at a time.

No less spectacular is the German Strength Through Joy, which has departments for sports, for better working conditions, for adult education, as well as its famed department for travel, excursions and holidays. In 1936, 6,000,000 workers made special Strength Through Joy trips. In 1937, the German worker had a choice of 250 different domestic trips, 15 sea trips in ships specially reconditioned for Strength Through Joy cruises. A Norwegian cruise costs $16 to a worker earning less than 300 marks ($120) monthly, a trip to the Canary Islands, $27.