Christmas at The White

In the spacious halls of the Greenbrier Hotel at White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., where leisure-loving Southerners played before the Civil War, a lonely gathering of Nazis celebrated Christmas. They were among the 159 German and Hungarian diplomats and newsmen and their families who have been transferred to "The White" from Washington.

On Christmas Eve they had a party in the hotel auditorium for the 15 little Nazi children in the party. (Some of the children were born in the U.S., are technically U.S. citizens.) It was a subdued affair, burdened with heavy Teutonic cheer. Kris Kringle appeared, and distributed gifts. They sang Christmas carols in solemn, piping voices. . . .

Handsome Dr. Hans Thomsen, Nazi charge d'affaires, and his staff were put up at The White to get them out of Washington, keep them in seclusion until they are returned to Germany. They had scarcely gone when FBI men moved into the German Embassy, discovered there a powerful short-wave radio station which had been sending messages in code (see p. 49).

Japanese Embassy and consular staffs in the U.S. have been corralled at the Homestead in Hot Springs, Va., the South's No. 2 watering place. But the Italian Embassy staff is still in Washington. It has not been moved because U.S. Embassy men are still in Rome.

Nazis at The White last week followed the routine of guests at any fashionable resort. On the leafy lawns and terraces they sunned themselves, played ping-pong, swam in the heated pool, bought quantities of clothing at shops in the hotel basement. They did not mingle with the other guests, took their meals in lonely splendor in their own section of the big dining room.

At the nearby town of Lewisburg, citizens held a mass meeting to protest this quartering of the enemy in their midst, were pacified when a State Department agent explained the situation. U.S. diplomats and newsmen are hibernating in corresponding comfort at Bad Nauheim in central Germany, pending exchange. In this war without honor, unlike World War I, the only way of insuring good treatment of U.S. diplomats caught in enemy territory is by strictly quid pro quo treatment. Said William Perry, Mayor of White Sulphur Springs: "We . . . are happy to have this privilege of doing our part during the war crisis."

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