Im Reichstag

When the Reichstag opened late last week, a day of merely perfunctory debate was followed by important party caucuses anent the Locarno Treaties.

Hitherto the Luther-Stresemann Government has been able to count with certainty upon the support of only the Centrist Parties. After deliberating for two hours last week, the Socialist caucus announced positively that it would throw in its lot with the Government. On that basis Chancellor Luther was generally conceded to have secured more than enough votes to insure ratification of the Locarno Pacts by the Reichstag. When the Reichsrat* endorsed the treaties, last week, by a vote of 34 to 4, the prophecy was considered to have become a certainty.

Queried one: "Why did not the Socialists announce this intention sooner, since they have always favored the Pacts? Did Chancellor Luther entice them by some means into his fold?"

Replied another: "Up to last week the Socialists have threatened to abstain from voting on the Pacts in the Reichstag, with the intention of calling the anti-Pact Nationalists' bluff that they would abstain from voting. The purpose of each group has been to make the other seem responsible for whatever the Reichstag does. Now the Socialists have taken the plunge. They intend to assume the responsibility and reap the rewards of making possible a coalition capable of ratifying the Pacts. Chancellor Luther has allegedly promised them that the present Cabinet will resign if and when the Pacts are signed, and that in the new Cabinet the Socialists will be well represented."

Amid such speculatory prognostications Chancellor Luther prepared two bills for immediate submission to the Reichstag. One would authorize the Reich Government to sign the Pacts at London on Dec. 1, 1925. The other would sanction the entrance of Germany into the League of Nations, as is specifically provided in the Pacts before they can become operative (TIME, Oct. 26, INTERNATIONAL) .

In the interval before these bills could be submitted, the National- ists, in caucus and out, continued to call for the flat rejection of the Pacts. General Ludendorff, arch-ultra-die-hard, spoke as follows:

"Once I divided honor and glory with Field Marshal von Hindenburg and--I dare proclaim it all aloud-- heightened his glory. Today my German heart aches when I see how the Field Marshal is sacrificing that glory, and it is sacrificed indeed if his name stands under the embodiment of shame and dishonor [the Locarno treaty]. Better to surrender one's position than glory, honor and one's own great past. That is the German way, and even more German would it appear for the Field Marshal to have given battle against this treaty of dishonor and enslavement. If the President really regards the Locarno policy as right, then must every German who is not soaked with black-red-gold or sold to mammon, veil his head. Then the Field Marshal President is become a danger for the national will. His name does not belong under this treaty. That at least does he owe to his fellow-warriors. We expect the Field Marshal not to sign but to fight."

-The Reichsrat is a council of representatives from the component states of the Reich. All bills, before they are presented to the Reichstag, require its endorsement. The significant fact is thus not the endorsement but the majorlty by which it passed.