Statesman's Death

Six hundred miles out from New York James Ramsay MacDonald paced up and down the glass shielded promenade deck of the Berengaria in golf cap and canvas shoes. Breathless, from the wireless room came an excited newsman. "Mr. MacDonald--Stresemann's dead!" "Stresemann? Oh I say, that's too bad." In the smoking room Prime Minister MacDonald pulled at his ear for a moment, then dictated a formal statement: "When I saw him last a few weeks ago I think both of us felt the 'goodbye' might be our farewell. Yet he was content and trusted that Germany would see to it that his work which had done so much for her, would be carried on when he was no longer there. On behalf of the British Government I send his relatives and his country our deepest sympathy." In Berlin, 24 hours earlier, Gustav Stresemann, Reichsaussenminister, his round face flushed with fever, had left the Foreign Office and hurried to a meeting of leaders of the German People's Party. A bill to force employers to insure employes against unemployment was up for discussion in the Reichstag. Chancellor Herman Mueller had come to Herr Stresemann's house that morning, warned him that People's Party industrialists threatened to vote against the insurance law. A crisis threatened which might cause the fall of the present government, upon which Foreign Minister Stresemann counted for ratification of the Young Plan, and the ensuing Allied evacuation of the Rhineland--his chief post-War ambition. He went to the meeting. Truculent party leaders gazed at his shining pink head, heard him alternately threaten and cajole in his rasping Prussian voice. The result, like the result of hundreds of similar meetings, was victory for Foreign Minister Stresemann. Party leaders agreed to allow the bill to pass, the governmental crisis was avoided. Herr Stresemann walked home, highly pleased with himself. Few except his personal friends noticed his unnatural color, how his bull neck had shrunken in his vast collar. In the garden of The Villa, his official residence, he stopped for a moment to prune his favorite standard roses with the nail scissors of his pocket knife. His attractive wife and his two sons, Wolfgang and Joachim were waiting for him at home with some friends who had stopped in for a game of bridge. "Ach, I feel so tired, Kathe," said Foreign Minister Stresemann, "I won't have my dinner. . . . I'll just go right to bed." Upstairs an efficient trained nurse hovered over him as he got ready for bed. handed him his toothbrush and a glass of water. Herr Stresemann lurched forward, the glass fell from his hand, he slumped to the floor. Terrified the nurse called Frau Stresemann from bridge, phoned for doctors. Minister Stresemann lay on the floor, unconscious, breathing heavily. At 5:25 in the morning he died. Cause of death: thrombosis, or clogging of the veins, a form of apoplexy. A theme beloved of novelists and playwrights is that of the hideously ugly man who wins universal admiration through the beauty of his character. Gustav Stresemann was stocky, shaven-headed, bullnecked; his voice was high pitched and rasping. Correspondents on first describing him instinctively sought euphemisms for "pig-eyed." Gustav Stresemann represented the typical Prussian of the political cartoonist as completely as his great and good friend, bleary Aristide Briand, typifies the cartoonist's Frenchman. Yet Gustav Stresemann was the first German to be entertained officially in France for 59 years. Said the semi-official Temps last week:

"He has fallen in the midst of a struggle fighting to end war and in striving for his country. Almost with his last breath he was striving for that peace and understanding in which he knew the only safety lay, and with which he so completely identified himself. He was a German who well merited the salute one owes to an adversary who has proven his metal and courage."

Gustav Stresemann was born in Berlin in 1878, the son of a beer merchant. Father Stresemann had higher plans for young Gustav than the beer business. Scrimped pfennigs sent him to Berlin and Leipzig universities, found him. a good job in an association of chocolate manufacturers, paved the path that brought Gustav Stresemann to the Reichstag in 1907.

In his early years in the Reichstag Stresemann was quite the blustering Junker that he looked. He spoke loud and long for Germany's need for territorial expansion, he obediently voted every increase in Germany's Imperial army. Throughout the War he was one of the Kaiser's most devoted followers, defending indiscriminate submarine warfare against the attacks of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg. With the Armistice and the disastrous Treaty of Versailles a sudden change came upon him. Always acutely practical he realized that right or wrong in the War, Germany was beaten, that her only hope of salvation lay in making friends with her former enemies. After a brief interval as German Chancellor, 1923 found him Germany's Foreign Minister, a position he has retained ever since. There followed the Locarno pact, Germany's entrance into the League--a record that won him the Nobel Peace prize in 1926 and which he topped off with the enthusiastic signing of the Kellogg anti-war pact. This exhausting series of international conferences brought him the warm personal friendship of French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, now Prime Minister of France. For five years Stresemann and Briand made a team that worked constantly, effectively for pan-European goodwill. Told of the death of his ruddy-faced teammate, rheumy Prime Minister Briand seemed heartbroken last week. Quickly he sent official messages of condolence to the German Embassy in Paris, the German government, followed them with a very personal message for his friend's wife: "I beseech you to believe in my sorrowful sympathy in the mourning which strikes you so cruelly. I shall ever guard a precious memory of your husband who in following a common ideal gave me an opportunity of appreciating the high level of his views and the perfect loyalty of his character." It was significant of the world's opinion that editors everywhere wasted little time with formal obituaries. In Germany newspapers were black bordered, Stresemann's seat in the Reichstag was draped in black, his desk piled high with flowers, but the instinctive reaction of editors and public alike was "Who in Germany can take his place?" Said Berlin's Socialist Vorwaerts: "The problem of finding a worthy successor to Dr. Stresemann is one of life and death to Germany."

German leaders tried hard to find a successor last week. At Schorfheide, his Bavarian shooting lodge, grizzled old President von Hindenburg quietly celebrated his 82nd birthday. An aide brought news of Stresemann's death. President von Hindenburg rushed back to Berlin. Preceding him was a telegram:

ON NEWS OF DR. STRESEMANN'S DEATH HAVE DECIDED TO TAKE THE HELM AND ACTIVE LEADERSHIP IN THE NATION TO AVOID CRISIS.

Hastily appointed temporary Foreign Minister was Dr. Stresemann's most faithful follower in the People's Party, Dr. Julius Curtius.

Throughout a solemn night, members of the Foreign Office stood around the catafalque, raised high above the speaker's tribune in the Reichstag, as rigidly motionless as the great dreary candles. Near was a very showy wreath blazoned with a crown and W from onetime Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm. Next day Stresemann was buried with peaceful pomp. Not a militarist, there was not a uniformed soldier in his cortege, which was led by members of his Leipzig student corps, bearing his student cap, which now lies with him in his grave. The funeral's pace was set by the dull thudding "Death March" from Goe;tterdaemmerung (The Twilight of the Gods*), interrupted by low, whining air planes from which whipped taut black streamers. One automobile was in the procession, that of Widow Stresemann. Led by grizzled President von Hindenburg, who left the sad line at the Foreign Office, other mourners stalked solemnly afoot to the graveyard.

*Goetterdammerung is a turgid opera by Richard Wagner, the composer to whose music most Nordics are married and buried ("Wedding March,'' ''Death March" from Lohengrin').