Dictators of the modern type have just the same facilities for disposing of opposition as did the tyrants of other days, and neither Hitler nor Mussolini are entirely free from suspicion that they have, when it suited them, murdered, or brought about the suicide of men with temerity enough to oppose their ideas. Fritsch, it will be remembered, fell in the course of the Polish campaign. He had been deprived of his command, and, like Uriah the Hittite, had been sent into the forefront of the battle, where he was shot through the back, while facing the enemy. The fact that he was subsequently given a ceremonial burial means nothing whatever. Fritsch had earned the displeasure of his leaders and"he was put out of the way' just as neatly as was Roehm and his fellows in the infamous purge which marked the early days of the Nazis in power. His burial with military honours was just another Nazi method of pleading not guilty to the indictment for murder which swept round the world.
Mussolini will never be able to shake off the accusation of having caused the murder of General Balbo. That remarkable flying man had captured the imagination of the Italian populace by leading the big Italian flight to the United States and back. He aroused Mussolini's jealousy, was sent to Libya where he met his death so the Italian Government told the world, in a flying accident. Balbo was inconvenient to Mussolini, might have been a possible contestant for power and'so, using a phrase undoubtedly often on the lips of an Italian gangster in America, he was "rubbed out." General von Schroeder, commander of the German army of occupation in Yugoslavia, like Balbo, also died "accidentally" recently. What he had done to call down upon him the wrath of Hitler is not yet clear, but his death is said to have removed another German general who was by no means happy over the exercise by Hitler of what his fawning followers venture to term his military genius.
The latest mysterious death is that of General Ernst Udets, of whom American Sources report that he committed suicide a short while ago after the commencement of the German invasion of Russia. The reason given was that he supported Goering in the latter's opposition to the Russian venture. Goering was apparently too powerful a man for Hitler openly to deal with, but he went into something in the nature of retirement and for some seeks past little has been heard of him in comparison with the enormous publicity he formerly enjoyed. But Udets was smaller fry, even though he was a close associate of Goering's and had been since the last war. He, it is reported, was placed under protective arrest by Himmler's notorjous Black Guard. Deprived of his command he was officially said to be on leave. He killed himself. Why he did so is not yet known, but i is thought that he feared something worse than protective arrest, or did so from despair over the failure of the Nazis to carry out the swift Blitzkrieg which they planned against the advice of their own military experts, The Nazis officially denied that Udets had committed suicide, but, failing to follow a method which they have adopted in other cases, they did not arrange for neutral press correspondents to see Udets in the flesh They would undoubtedly have done so had they been able, for no better means could possibly be found of disproving what, if Udets is not dead, would be no more than a silly lie. There may yet be other German generals who may disappear from the scene, for Goering and Udets were not the only ones who opposed the invasion of Russia with wisdom which is daily becoming more apparent. It has been stated that unless Hitler can gain the day over the Russians before the autumn the Army will take over control in Germany. That would mean the elimination of Germany's evil genius, and the possibilities are that, as such a likelihood approaches, those German military leaders from whom his successor would probably be chosen will need to take every precaution against being murdered, or should it more aptly be said "suicided."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.