Again Stresemann

With heartfelt sympathy and hearty guttural cheers the Reichstag welcomed back from, a sevenmonths' illness, last week, the nation's acknowledged leader, Dr. Gustav Stresemann, "The German Lloyd George."

As he slowly mounted the rostrum and then stood mopping his bald head, amid the rattle of handclaps and the roar of "Hoch! Hoch! HOCH!" Dr. Stresemann seemed paler than usual but otherwise utterly "the typical German," plump, correct and full of earnest energy. He, the smart son of a rich brewer, is the great Foreign Minister who has held office while eight German cabinets have fallen, and his ailing kidneys are those which have been of vital interest to all Europe for half a year.

Last week, on the occasion of Dr. Stresemann's resumption of active command at the Foreign Office, he was expected to make a general declaration of policy, and did so, keynoting on:

I. Limitation of Armaments.

II. Revision of Reparations.

III. Evacuation of the Rhineland.

When his short, 30-minute speech was over, Gustav Stresemann had unquestionably voiced the consensus of German opinion on these three vital topics. He soon received a vote of confidence 219 to 98. His speech was no less definitive and important than the Armistice Day Address in which President Calvin Coolidge spoke for the U. S. (TIME, Nov. 26) upon two of the very topics keynoted by Dr. Stresemann--Limitation of Armaments and Inter-Allied Debts.*

Limitation. Closely paralleling President Coolidge, the German Foreign Minister flayed Britain and France for concluding their now happily defunct Naval & Military Pact (TIME, Nov. 5 et ante). "If the two Powers had made such a pact really binding," he declared, "they would have violated the Locarno Treaty" (TIME, Oct. 26, 1925) whereby Great Britain pledged aid to Germany no less than France to preserve the peace of Europe.

Again paraphrasing President Coolidge, though in more vigorous language, Dr. Stresemann added: "It is cheap to sneer at the Kellogg Pact renouncing war. The Kellogg pact is what the governments and peoples themselves will make of it. I do not doubt that history will see in it an important advance toward better international relations."

Finally the traditional desire of Republican Germany for general Limitation of Armaments was voiced by Dr. Stresemann. who said with a wry smile: "That is not only my policy, but must be the policy of every German Government. It is the only possible policy for a nation which the Powers have disarmed."

Reparations. The principle on which the U. S. has made debt settlements with France and Italy--"capacity to pay"--was urged by smart Gustav Stresemann as the principle which must guide the new Reparations Revision Commission (TIME, Oct. 29).

Said he: "One will be able to speak of a real solution of the Reparations problem only if it does not exceed Germany's economic capacity--in other words, if it enables us to fulfil our obligations by our own power and without endangering the standard of life of our people."

Evacuation. "We will not consent to pay a single mark in the way of additional Reparations, in order to secure evacuation of the Rhineland by Allied troops," declared Dr. Stresemann, thus flatly contradicting the French thesis that, under the Treaty of Versailles, Allied troops have the right to remain in the Rhineland until 1935, and that if Germany wants them out before then she must pay heavily.

On this sore point, closest to the hearts of all Germans, Gustav Stresemann rose' to his climax:

"It was a poor aid to the renunciation of the war spirit . . . when last Armistice Day was celebrated on German soil by foreign troops who paraded in a manner intended to remind the German people that they were vanquished. in the World War. . . .

"Germany stands unshaken on her claim to a speedy evacuation of the entire occupied territory, and her claim is dependent neither on the solution of other problems nor on any other conditions.

"Not only Germany, but the most remote circles abroad feel the continual presence of foreign troops on German soil is in crass conflict with the development of international concord."

*An inseparable part of the general Reparations Question.