Swastikas, Man & Boy

When last year the Nazis suppressed several German Boy Scout organizations and took their membership into the Hitler Youth organization, the Boy Scouts' Founder, Lieut.-General Lord Baden-Powell, declared, "I am very glad. The German Boy Scouts were not attached to us. They were military. We are unmilitary and non-political--just Boy Scouts and nothing more."

What Lord Baden-Powell did not know was that one set of German scouts, the German Boy Scout Association, was in fact attached to his organization and that the Hitler Youth leader, Baldur von Schirach, had passed it by. Last week von Schirach announced that it, too, "is no longer warranted," dissolved it and forbade its leader. Eberhard Plewe, to conduct further work among boys. The last of the German Scouts laid away their fleur-de-lis Scout badges. Presently they will be issued the swastika emblems of Hitler Youth.

Nearly all that were left of Germany's pre-Nazi boys' organizations were Catholic and last week von Schirach announced he would abolish them this year.

Same day President von Hindenburg decreed that the German Army and Navy, heretofore technically independent of the Nazi Party, must wear the Nazi swastika on their cockades and their uniforms. Tailors went to work stitching braid swastikas on service uniforms, gold for the Navy, silver for the Reichswehr.

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