TROOPS ON RHINE

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 210, 5 September 1928, Page 7

TROOPS ON RHINE

FRENCH ATTITUDE, No Evacuation Without Guarantee. FORCES AND REPARATIONS. (Australian Press Assn. —United Serviced LONDON, September 4. A message from Geneva says the German Chancellor, Dr. Mueller, iu a statement to German journalists, revealed the fact that Germany, a month ago, through the Ambassadors of the interested countries, requested the complete evacuation of the Rhine - land by the forces of the Allies, and is now awaiting the result. The Paris correspondent of the "Morning Post"' says the request has. already been answered by French opinion. The view taken by M. Poincare'i Government is that the occupation cannot be renounced without a compensating guarantee, for the occupation is a guarantee of the fulfilment, not only of the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, but of the payment "of reparation. Moreover, the military part of the bargain is officially regarded as having been fairly carried out.

Reparation payments are only just beginning to be made in full force as modified under the Dawes plan, and the German Press is already complaining of the intolerable burden. How then, it is asked, can France be expected to surrender lier hold on Germany without an alternative guarantee? The German Foreign Minister, Herr Stresemann, foreshadowed this idea at Thoirv. It may suit Germany not to forget, but there is no other way. If the Americans are not willing to initiate a scheme for the taking up of bonds in the German railways, or ill some other stable form of German property, then the Germans must. devis« some other scheme, which will give France security against the cessation of reparation payments by Germany or the cessation of the demand for payment by the United States. No amount of high-flown talk from Germany will alter this attitude, on which the peopl- of France are unanimous.