On Saturday next, the Supreme Court of Germany will announce its solution of the dilemma it faces today: what to do with Torgler? Last Thursday the prosecution, with self-consciousness oozing copiously from each paragraph, demanded the death by hanging of this Communist and his alleged soulmate, Vander Lubbe, and dismissed the charges against Dmitroff, Taneff, and Popoff, the Bulgarians. This far the Nazis were willing to go in the strange realm of generosity; it would have been hopelessly crude to ask for the conviction of these last three Bolsheviks, against whom only the most insignificant evidence was ever advanced. But they seem to have decided that at least one scapegoat must be retained. Van der Lubbe is not now of much use to the Brownshirts, for even they admit that he could have had no connection with the German Communist Party except as a dupe, and the Dutchman in his startling but sane moments confessed to having fired the Reichstag quite unaided by any of the other defendants, and since the main objective of the trial is to prove the guilt of the Reds and the white-as-driven-snow innocence of the Nazis, it is necessary to have one self-declared Communist at any rate up for high treason in danger of his life under a law passed after the crime had been committed.

Nevertheless, though no one can predict what peculiar decisions will next emanate from Hitler's warped mentality, I should say that Torgler's chances of acquittal were strong. It is true that this might bring further attention to bear on the question of the real firebugs, but that embarrassment is inevitable whatever the decision. To execute Torgler with such patently illogical and insufficient evidence would only serve first to focus sympathy on a Red, and secondly, suspicion and hatred on his enemies; men of Torgler's courage and intelligence make martyrs not soon forgotten. Acquittal will be a hard degree for the court to issue; Herr Goebbels has not led the German people to expect such a decision. And it will be doubly hard to pin all the burden on Van der Lubbe, after the testimony of the experts that he could not have done it alone. Who helped him? Was there, as one correspondent intimated, a second fire, laid by those who had access to Goering's tunnel? These queries will doubtless be asked anyway, and, allowing due reservations for Teutonic reasoning. I think it will be plain to the Court that Torgler's execution would only aggravate the bitterness which envelops the entire case. CASTOR.