Million Mobilized

French war games staged last week brought 20,000 men into action and the U. S. staged maneuvers with about an equal number. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler ordered to the swastika colors no less than 1,000,000 men, the most up-to-date, although far from the largest, army in Europe. This was mobilization--not necessarily for war--but definitely mobilization on a scale nearly comparable to the Imperial Russian mobilization of 1914 which Kaiser Wilhelm saw as a casus belli.

Far from making any secret last week of what they called "trial mobilization," Nazi authorities in Berlin took no steps to hamper the sending out by correspondents of crisp, alarming details.

This was in contrast to zealous Nazi efforts a few months ago to keep secret their army's preparations for marching into Austria. Last week, for the first time since the World War, Germany called up for maneuvers not only army units but also reservists--the newly trained classes of 1934, 1935 and 1936, plus units of the Landwehr, including men in their late 30s and early 40s, some World War veterans.

The German army magazine Deutsche Wehr ("German Defense") pointed with pride to a "fundamental difference" between the army of the Fatherland and that of other European countries. In France during peace time, declared Deutsche Wehr, the typical army company unit of 170 men is not kept at full strength, but in Germany it is. In France the calling up of reservists is thus in its first stage simply a filling up of the army to its nominal full strength, but in Germany the calling of reservists means adding manpower to an army already full. The regular German Army, boasted Deutsche Wehr, is kept permanently ready "so that full company units can fan out from the garrisons at a moment's call."

During the great mobilization of last week, German citizens got scores of reminders that, as during the last war, their needs are still wholly subordinate, to the army's. Workers about to set out on vacation tours or cruises of the Strength Through Joy organization found these had all been "canceled indefinitely." In Munich and in most German cities near the Eastern border, people waited on street corners for the motor busses which usually take them to work, then were told they had better walk, since the army had commandeered the busses. Even mail trucks of the German Post Office stopped delivering letters, began delivering soldiers, reservists and supplies. As men called to the colors left their jobs all over Germany, none knowing how soon he could return, German women were sent to fill many of the vacancies.

Quite apart from the immediate mobilization, the number of workers conscripted throughout Germany for rush work digging trenches, stringing barbed wire and erecting cement pillboxes every 150 yards along the Fatherland's new "Siegfried Line" (which faces part of the French "Maginot Line") rose last week to 300,000. Road contractors in southern Germany were also busy on rush orders to improve the surfacing of roads leading to the Czechoslovak frontier "to withstand more heavy traffic."

Many physicians in Munich received orders to leave their private practice and report for "50 days' service" with the army medical corps, each doctor to bring with him food for two days and two changes of linen. The army bought foodstuffs at such a rate that private German grocers reported they could not get many staples. A luxury which disappeared almost at once was seltzer water, in great demand by the army to quench officers' thirst in the heat of August.

Meanwhile, German householders in the eastern frontier regions were advised that troops would be billeted in their homes, with precautions to be taken against German soldiers becoming too intimate with Jewesses. Farmers throughout Germany were ordered to rush their harvesting, complete it by the first of this week if possible, and be ready to have their horses requisitioned by the army.

Since there had been no army mobilization on this scale in Germany since 1914, the reactions of the German people last week were marked nervousness and alarm --reactions noted and factually cabled by the leading correspondents in Germany, quite unhindered. It was pikestaff plain that Adolf Hitler wanted all Europe to hear about and be frightened by his mobilization. Der Fuehrer, who thus far has had only to rattle the German sword to get what he wanted piecemeal, was rattling his loudest for the benefit of Lord Runciman in Prague.

Europe stood by watchfully but refused to be seriously alarmed. Military experts reported that the German Army probably needed exercise because: 1) its march into Austria last spring revealed several technical weaknesses in its service of supply, etc.; 2) its reservists, following post-War disarmament, are just now beginning to reach significant numbers and need training. Last week Europe was in a mood to let Adolf Hitler exercise his boys and put on a show.

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