Goering Out?

German editors who have not even dared hint the split between Chancellor Adolf Hitler and the No. 2 Nazi, bull-necked Prussian Premier Hermann Wilhelm Goering, at last had something they could print last week. Herr Hitler had omitted General Goering from the list of high officials to whom he sent New Year's greetings, and Premier Goering had snubbed the Chancellor in kind. Berlin rocked at the news.

The imp of discord between Hitler and Goering is club-footed little Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, increasingly mighty as his Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment rivets its control ever tighter on Germany's press, radio, drama and cinema. Dr. Goebbels' scheme for getting rid of the Premier of Prussia is simply to abolish Prussia as a State. Last week General Goering, fighting for his Premier-hood, was able to force into one and only one Berlin newspaper a short account of a call he had just made on President von Hindenburg.

"To General Goering," reported Der Tag, "President von Hindenburg stressed the historical importance of Prussia. The aged President will not permit his beloved Prussia, which for nearly half a century was the backbone of the German Empire, to be carved up into districts without a fight."

Dr. Goebbels would carve all the States of Germany up into districts ruled from Berlin. Herr Hitler is said to favor this plan. Last week Dr. Goebbels compelled every German paper to publish accounts of a supposedly idyllic meeting between Chancellor and President. Old Paul declared that Gentle Adolf "within a short period" has put the German people through a "complete mental and spiritual rebirth" and given them "new zest."

Replied the Chancellor to the President: "We cherish as a special grace of fate that in you as the supreme patron of our will and actions we have a witness who can and inevitably must convince the whole world of the sincerity of our intentions."

That the 86-year-old President still retains some grip on the State was seen when he appointed Lieut.-General Baron von Fritsch, an army officer of the old school, to be Commander-in-Chief of the Reichswehr, thus spiking rumors that the German Army would be turned over to that arrant Nazi queer, Captain Ernst Roehm, Generalissimo of Storm Troops.

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