his heavy grey overcoat, then he turned and went up to the top of the tower. Presently we heard the footfall of the guard. When they came into view we saw three chained men marching in locked step between them. The hangman followed at leisure.

Having deposited their cargo at the gallows the guard retreated to the barbed wire fence at the back of the square. Only the hangman remained by his victims, who stood quietly, staring. not seeing With their haggard faces and stooped bodies there was a frightening resemblance between these three which had never been there before. On their jackets the word "homo ̈ had been stenciled. "Homo"" Man? There was no such inscription on the hangman's coat, nor on those of the guard or the commandant who stood at the top of the tower, bellowing out the accusation in three imperfect languages.

It was a time of war; flames, death and destruction had swept over the German Reich--out of these flames, this death, this destruction, three young men had sought to salvage a moment of brotherhood, of love--that was their crime. Their punishment followed.

Two members of the guard came up and tore the clothing of the three wide open, then commenced to beat them. It was a custom, a few hours before such beating, to feed the men to satiety with heavily spiced foods. The men screamed. The other prisoners stood silent, hardly breathing; their faces were deeply shadowed in the scarlet-spun dawn, but their eyes were filled with fire.

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After the beating came the drums that were hung around the neck of each of the three. "Drum!" Yelled out one of the guardsmen. They began to drum. "Sing!" Grotesque voices bursting out of tightened muscle and pain rose at the center of the square.

The commandant had descended from the tower to get a better view. He was laughing now. The adjutant broke into a gufaw, his adam's apple bobbing up and down. Over the rest of us, silence hung like a passionate outcry.

"To the gallows!"

They died quietly, indifferently, too broken to know death. We were ordered back to our barracks. The men moved slowly alone or in pairs but. as though deeply ashamed, neither speaking nor looking one another in the face I lingered for just an inconspicuous moment; the nightmare had no reality. It was too hard to believe that those two lifeless swaying figures were Leo and Hans, comrades I had known, spoken to; too hard to believe that the that the third, blood stained and near naked. Herbert who had once been so close to me; too hard to believe that the day was Easter Friday, when long ago a Christ had died for the human race, and the human race stood by.

was

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mattachine REVIEW

Der Kreis. June 1957

ON THE RACK

by Scorpio

Literature makes decidedly generous use of our problem as one of the most lively sources of its inspiration. If it were to establish be. tween us and others those bonds of understanding and charity which we crave, we would certainly be the first to rejoice But alas! Most often, we come across essays, novels or worthless plays which further falsify the already false judgment that society holds over us. And from loud, inopportune publicity, we emerge distorted heroes. ridiculous, unmanly, selfish, compulsive menaces just as Julien Green points out to us in a singularly convincing manner.

At the dawn of a new era clamoring for a close collaboration of all men, for a common sharing of our energies (and God is my witness that we are capable of bearing our portion of grandeur and sacrifice), it is distressing to witness the flourishing of poorly documented, barren, grotesque literary works which, very fortunately in a sense, are most often laughable.

It is with mixed feelings of sadness and pity that I have become acquainted with two plays from the American theatre which, 10 credit the reviews about them, must have achieved top success in the United States. They were presented recently in Paris, in faithful adaptations, but they did not meet with an especially enthusiastic public And for good reason!

The first, by Robert Anderson (adapted by Roger-Ferdinant) is Tea and Sympathy. The fine interpretation by Ingrid Bergman does not in any way change my judgment. It is a sober story of slander, in which a student is wrongly accused of pederasty. because of his gentleness, his timidity with women and his way of combing his hair ... . The end is painfully ironic since the real "culprit" is another man, the very husband of the woman whom the student sccretly loves:

The second play is by Tennessee Williams (the well-known auther of The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire). Its adaptation is credited to Andre Obey. Its title is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof One might well have called it "Cat in Heat"; literature would have lost nothing by doing so.

The story relates the adventure of Brick, husband of Margaret. whom the latter reproaches for his sexual frigidity and his penchant for drinking. Why does Brick drink at this point? He drinks in or27