Evening Post. FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1924. GERMANY & THE EXPERTS' PLAN

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 103, 2 May 1924, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1924. GERMANY & THE EXPERTS' PLAN

Germany, according to the Berlin, correspondent of "The Times," has laid all her cards on the table. He might have added that she has. dr>ne so in a characteristically tactless, ungracious, and offensive fashion. At Brest Litovsk Germany put all her cards on the table, and that there might be no mistake about it supported them with the utmost truculence of speech and a loaded revolver. At Versailles she had no revolver to argue with, but the change of fortune from victor to vanquished had left her truculence unimpaired, and by a display of the same quality she almost brought one of the London Conferences to an abrupt close.at the very outset. The very

latest exhibition of German manners was in the chorus of execration which greeted ex-President Wilson's death and the cold malignity of the official insult to his memory and to his nation on the day of his funeral. The report of the reparation experts did not provide the German Chancellor with as good .an opportunity as those that we have mentioned, but on a much humbler scale it gave him some excellent chances of saying the wrong thing and of omitting to say the right thing or of saying it in quite the wrong way. And of all these he availed himself with the thoroughness which puts "Deutschland ueber- Alles" as conspicuously at least in this department as to any others.

Germany's proper attitude to the experts' report was clearly one of courtesy and thankfulness, though not necessarily-exuberant thankfulness, of conciliation and goodwill, of readiness to accept the verdict as an infinite improvement on the humiliation and the waste and the misery of the present procedure, and of hope that modifications here and there may make it still more acceptable. No note of this kind was sounded by Dr. Mark i-r; his speech at Dusseldorf. He expresses no gratitude, no sense of relief, no submission to the decision of that very Caesar to whom Germany herself had appealed, no desire to co-operate loyally in the discharge of the Allies' just claims to the full extent of her capacity. The sentences quoted by tlie coi--respondent of "The Times" abound in negatives and stipulations and categorical imperatives. There are no less than five "must's" in four consecutive sentences, and every one of them proclaims an obligation on the part not of Germany but of the other side. "The war which has raged under the veil of peace must be ended" ; there must be no more expulsions ; the prisons must be cleared of" their political captives; the economic and administrative freedom of the Ruhr and the Ehineland must be restored; these are not requests to be granted after full payment, but conditions which must bo satisfied before Germany can begin to pay.

Believing that Germany has had good cause for complaint since the Armistice, and especially during the last eighteen months, oniv makes one the more regretful that iii the presence of the best opportunity she has yet had she should show herself so clumsy, so rude, a.-» completely unable to sco that the dictatorial tone which was possible at Brest Litovsk was put completely out of date at Versailles. It is, however, permissible

to' hope that the real attitude of

the nation is not fairly represented by the gaucherie of this official utterance. The first impression made by th,e_ experts' lejaort jn

Berlin was said to be "quite favourable." "All except a few irresponsibles," said the "Daily Chronicle's" correspondent, "admit that it is an honest, impartial effort, but consider the money payments are too heavy." And, in spite of the Chancellor, that diagnosis appears to hold good still, for we were told yesterday that the unequivocal acceptance of the Treaty _of Versailles and the experts' report is the principal issue at the elections for the Reichstag, and that "the favourable reception of the experts' report will undoubtedly influence the elections in favour of the Democrats, Socialists, and Republicans." Dr. Mark's speech is probably but another example of the unfailing skill of German diplomacy in making the worst even of a good case.

In one respect the Chancellor's performance may possibly have a good effect. The. experts' report was at first as well received" in Paris as in Berlin, but the German approval afterwards inclined the French to review their judgment. There must surely be some catch ia a' plan which seemed so good to the Germans! The German Chancellor's Dusseldorf speech should at least convince these hesitating French patriots that the report does not really amount to a hundred per cent, finding in Germany's favour. If any doubt remains, they may surely think themselves safe in M. Poincare's hands. Indeed, if we are to take both his utterances and those of the Gerraan Chancellor at their respective face values, the recommendations of the experts still find an irresistible force confronted by an immovable obstacle in the old familiar way. But the conflict has not alarmed London. The spirit of the Allies as shown in their re ; plies regarding the reparation proposals are said to have filled Downing Street with ' optimism, and in Paris the official verdict on Mr. MacDonakl's speech is that "no European statesman's words since the Armistice have been inspired by warmer sympathy towards France." In the difficult task of resolving the apparent impasse between Germany's claim for economic unity and fiscal independence and the French insistence on guarantee's Mr. Mac Donald \vill have the advantage of a reciprocal sympathy which neither of his predecessors could command.