The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY. DECEMBER 27, 1924. GERMANY AND THE LEAGUE.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 307, 27 December 1924, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY. DECEMBER 27, 1924. GERMANY AND THE LEAGUE.

For the cause that lacks astittmnm. For the terong that needs retittanet, For the future in the distance. And the good that we can it.

MkJlllinill mill I ML. LLHUULi Jt is characteristic of the mental ami moral "make-up" of the German people that now the time seems to have come to consider seriously their admission to the League of Nations they meet the suggestions of the Powers with a display of resentful arrogance and begin at once to dictate the terms on which they are prepared to accept this oiler. In the first place tiiey demand that it they agree to join the League Germany must come in on identically the same terms as other States, and her repudiation of "war guilt" must be accepted. Secondly, if Germany becomes a member of the League she is to enjoy the same privileges and advantages as -other States in regard to the control of "mandated' , territories and colonies. Thirdly, Germany refuses to enter the League unless she is to be allowed to decide for herself whether she shall or shall not be compelled to participate with other members of the League in the coercion of recalcitrant States or Powers which may attempt to disturb the world's peace. To put it briefly, what the Germans want is to go into the League entirely on their own term-" without accepting any kind of responsibility; and they apparently believe that by staying out long enough they can cause enough trouble and anxiety to induce the Powers to agree to the conditions that they have laid down. Some men advise the world to let the dead past bury its dead, and to work for the world's peace by treating the Hermans henceforth as friends and brothers. The answer to all this obviously is that, if and when the Germans give proof that their attitude toward the rest of the world is substantially and fundamentally different from what it was twenty years ago. the other nations will be prepared to readjust relations with them. But so far very little proof of the kind desired has been forthcoming. The whole world knows that the new Germany, i n sp j te of its change of Government and the outward transfiguration of its political methods, has devoted itself with energy and success to the task of shirking its liabilities and evading the conditions of peace that it has accepted, and building up by stealth the military strength by which it hopes sooner or later °to reassert itself against its foes. The German Note u> the Powers dealing

with the League of Nations makes a special grievance of the fact that Germany's army is by the terms of the Treaty reduced to 100,000 men. And why? Simply because Germany, so long as she possessed unrestricted military resources, was a permanent danger to the world's peace. And at the very moment when this protest w made we learn that the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission has just reported that Germany still fails to comply with the conditions laid down by the Powers in regard to the reorganisation of the police on civil lines, the transformation of munition factories, the supply of war material, and the recruiting of troops. And with both this fact and the German Note on admission to the League should be rend the statement of French fears which M. Herriot, who is no jingo, made to Mr. Mac Donald at Chequer*. M. Herriot'* "will to peace" is? undeniable, hut lie is anxious for the future.