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21
January 31, 1938
paign produced ominous offshoots. In Ecuador, Dictator Alberto Enriquez gave alien Jewish traders 30 days to leave the country. Brazil's President Getulio Vargas announced similar measures, then retracted them to avoid renewed accusations of Fascism. In a Polish village a judge sentenced a Jewish shopkeeper to fourteen days' imprisonment for abusing an anti-Semitic picket: "Pickets of Jewish shops perform a national duty."
In Rumania the Jew-baiters, who had hitherto failed to carry out their threats, staged their biggest drive. Premier Octavian Goga's Fascist government announced it would expel 500,000 of the country's 1,000,000 Jews-and not one would be allowed to take money out of the country. Meanwhile, officials forbade the speaking of Yiddish, the sale of kosher meat, and Jew-Gentile intermarriage. A mob beat Jewish lawyers out of a Bucharest court-room, and the National Theatre planned a gala production of an anti-Semitic drama called "The Village Bloodsucker."

Background
When the December elections failed to back up Carol's cabinet, the King picked himself a new government, headed by Goga - who had polled only 9 per cent of the vote. Last week Carol dismissed Parliament and ordered new elections Mar. 2.
Ordinarily, Rumanian governments easily win elections by brutal coercion. But in last month's poll this method had failed to work. Last week Carol reinforced Goga's anti-Semitic appeal with two foxy election-eering tricks. He abolished party symbols, which illiterate peasants use as a guide in marking their ballots, and substituted a confusing series of dots-Goga's party clearly placed at the top with one dot. He also decreed that Jews must first prove their citizenship before voting-which they will be unable to do before the election.

Prospects  
The New York Times Balkan correspondent, G.E.R Gedye, got an inside glimpse of Rumanian Fascism by interviewing Premier Goga and his mentor, Prof. Alexander Cuza. The pallid, shifty-eyed Premier flatly declared that "we have too many Jews... I propose to ask the League to see that 500,000 are removed." More important, he admitted that he "was going to make treaties of friendship with Italy and Germany" - a final blow to Bucharest's wobbling alliance with Paris. Gedye then saw Professor Cuza, shriveled founder of Rumanian anti-Semitism, who boasts he wore a swastika before Hitler was born. Grinning pleasantly, the professor cackled: "Tell the readers... that you have talked with Rumania's most ferocious, anti-Semite and you found him a pleasant old gentleman of 80 who wishes no harm to anyone and wants only this-that every single Jew shall pack up his baggage and leave Rumania."

U.S.S.R.
A month ago Pravada, chief organ of the Communist party, blasted against the excesses of the seventeen-month-old Soviet purge. Last week the Central Committee of the Communist party, headed by Joseph Stalin, called a halt to "excesses" of the purge within the organization, ordering the reinstatement of thousands to party and jobs.

The Soviet people gratefully heralded the end of the purge, forgetting that they have done so three times before and that, as Pravda made clear, there will be no relaxation in the hunt for "traitors and spies"

After finally admitting that Mrs. Ruth Marie Rubens, American citizen who entered Moscow on a faked passport as Mrs. Donald L. Robinson, is being held in Lubianka Prison on suspicion of spying, Soviet officials refused to Loy Henderson, American chargé d'affaires, to visit her until after they have finished questioning her.

Irish Settlement
Eire to Work With Britain on Defense Program
A tall, dour-faced man stood outside 10 Downing Street last week and enjoyed an astonishing London street scene: a crowd of Irishmen waving caps and hoarsely shouting: "Up Dev! Up the republic!" Prime Minister Eamon de Valera of Eire had just concluded three days of conversations with Neville Chamberlain and ushered in the best era of Anglo-Irish relations since the 1921 rebellion. The two Premiers had tentatively settled the thorniest Anglo-Irish problem: Eire will not have to pay $25,000,000 a year in land annuities. 

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[[Picture of Lord Craigavon wearing a dark suit with a white blouse, with his whole body angled perpendicular to the frame, facing the left]]
Wide World
Lord Craigavon, iron Orangeman

Annuities
In 1922 the newly formed Irish Free State agreed to recompense absentee British landlords for the estates which had been divided among their tenants. Ten years later, de Valera arbitrarily canceled this agreement: impoverished Ireland simply could not afford to pay.

London retaliated by imposing heavy tariffs on cattle, the Emerald Isle's chief export to Britain, and "Dev" promptly raised duties on British imports, at the same time encouraging uneconomic home industries. This tariff war cost too much; two years ago the countries arranged a coal-for-cattle deal. Last month, after his new constitution had severed Dublin's few remaining ties to the British Crown, de Valera felt that it was time for a full peace.

Ulster
At this point, Viscount Craigavon, the Belfast Prime Minister, discovered that the Anglo-Irish talks would include de Valera's plan to unite North and South Ireland. he immediately called a general election for Feb. 9. 

A hard-bitten, granite-faced, Scotch-Irish Presbyterian who has been Ulster's Premier since Ireland's partition in 1922, Craigavon is both a fervent, powerful speaker and an icy-nerved parliamentarian. He maintains an iron grip on his Conservative party-which in the Ulster House of Commons outnumbers the Irish Nationalists 37-11; he has never lost an election in Northern Ireland. He knows that Feb. 9 the Orangemen will vote solidly for his Conservative party as a protest against union. The bitter Catholic-Protestant feud divides Ulster as rigidly in politics as it does socially and religiously. 

Strategy
By mutual consent, d Valera and Chamberlain dropped the question of union from their negotiations last week. Instead they tentatively agreed on a solution of the land-annuities problem. Dublin will retain them for equipping a small mechanized army, an up-to-the-minute air fleet, and for building anti-aircraft and coastal defenses-a program immediately begun by de Valera's announcement that the 7,000 man Irish Army will be doubled. In return the British Navy will relinquish peacetime use of its costly bases at Berehaven, Cork, and Lough Swilly. 

By this agreement London has one less worry: that swift invasion of a defenseless Ireland might place an enemy in Britain's rear. Equally important, the end of Irish bitterness and the coordination of defenses will allow Britain to debark all-important food and raw-material imports at Western Irish ports, well beyond the range of Continental bombers.