Stalin, Schutzbund & Orphans

From dynamic Josef Stalin languid parlor Socialists get no help, but violent death-defying Socialists stir his sympathies. Last week he took under the Soviet Government's protection refugee children of Austrian Socialists who had the boldness to take arms and do battle in Vienna last winter against Austria's "Christian Fascist" Government (TIME, Feb. 26). Into Moscow rumbled a flower-decked train pack-jammed with Austrian moppets most of whose fathers had died fighting in the Schutzbund (Socialist storm troops). By twos and threes the children have escaped to Czechoslovakia where Soviet agents put them on the special train last week. As the train chuffed across Poland the refugees were compelled by Polish soldiers to furl their red flags, but once in Russia they wiggled them from every window. Said a Soviet spokesman, "These children will be sent first to vacation camps and then to schools as proteges of the Soviet Union."

Same day in Vienna the new Austrian Government of Chancellor Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg made a belated gesture of appeasement to Austrian Socialists by letting out of jail their beloved leader, Dr. Karl Seitz, for years Mayor of Vienna. His health has been failing fast and seemingly the Government feared popular indignation should he die imprisoned. Looking worn and broken, 65-year-old Socialist Seitz was spirited secretly to the Auersperg sanatorium. There two detectives were stationed at his bedside and two police men set to guard the door of his private ward. "I am a poor schoolteacher on a pension," wailed Dr. Seitz's wife, "and they tell me I must pay for these guards or my husband will be sent back to jail!"

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