Evening Post. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1927. OIL ON THE GENEVA FIRES

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 70, 20 September 1927, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1927. OIL ON THE GENEVA FIRES

' The chronology of yesterday's message from Berlin which reported the German President's speech at Tannenburg is as remarkable as its substance.

President Hinden^burg, we are informed, celebrated his birthday by unveiling a typically massive war memorial on the site of the Battle of Tanncnbuig, where thirteen years ago he stemmed the Russian invasion of East Prussia.

.As a birthday celebration the ceremony seems to have been, just a fortnight ahead of the clock, for it is hardly possible that the writer of the biographical article in the first of the post-war supplements to the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" can be wrong when he tells us that "Hindenburg, Paul yon, German soldier, chief of the great" general staff during the World War, was born on 2nd October, 1847, at Posen." When his four-score years have been completed, President yon Hindenburg, "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of His countrymen," will surely deserve the best that they can do for him in the way "of a birthday celebration, and if there is not too much of the goosestep and too much of the injured innocent about it the world outside of France should be able to add a hearty tribute of sympathy and admiration. No generous foe would refuse to extend that tribute even to his war services. The appreciation of the value, not to Germany only but to the world, of his subsequent services to the cause of peace is a matter not so much of generosity as of common-sense.

Referring to the "gigantic task" which devolved upon Hindenburg after the Armistice of leading Germany's partially disorganised armies and disbanding them, the writer already quoted says that "the magnanimity and patriotic devotion of the man were even more strikingly displayed in this emergency than in his greatest military achievements." In his address to the army Hindenburg declared lhat they "issued from the struggle proud arid .with heads erect," but that the Armistice had provided a "hard test for their spirit and discipline."

In battle, ho concluded, your Field-Marshal-General never left you in the lurch. And I rely upon you now as before.

In peace as in war it must be admitted that the General has "played the game," and it is only necessary to recall the fears with which the news of his election to the Presidency in April, 1925, was received outside of Germany in order to get some idea of what that has meant. He has faithfully observed his oath of loyalty to the Republic; he has exercised not an aggressive but a moderating and restraining influence; it was from the spirit of the Ruhr to the spirit of Locarno that he helped to lead his countrymen. Had the fears of April, 1925, been fulfilled, had the President satisfied the expectations of the Monarchists and the Die-hards who supported him to a man, had M. Poincare got all of his own back with interest and M. Briand's advances been repelled, what a different Europe we should have seen to-day! The measure of that difference is almost an exact measure of our obligations to Hindenburg, for though he has not conducted the diplomacy of Germany, and may not even lvave contributed much to its inspiration, a single hostile word from him would at any time have set the old fires ablaze again and involved any friendly negotiations in cureless ruin.

It must have been not long before Hindenburg's election to the Presidency lhat Ludendorff, who had been his. colleague and confidant during the War but had since proved himself to be politically impossible, was making his appeals to German patriotism in the name of "Tannenburg and the Old .Army." It is well for Germany and for Europe that Ludendorff was not commissioned to speak for German patriotism at the unveiling of the Tannenburg war memorial, on Sunday. Even outside of France there are doubtless many who would have been glad if Hindenburg also had not touched the job. Yet the Battle of Tannenburg was a great event in the military annals of Germany, and it cannot be said that the President handled the occasion in a provocative spirit. The battle ' itself is certainly not an event which either Britain or France should object to seeing commemorated. It was not a British or a French defeat. It was an annihilating defeat for the Russian invaders of East Prussia, whereby they may nevertheless be said to have won the War for the Allies. The date of the Battle of Tannenburg is 26th to 31st August, 1914, but the operations had gone far enough by the first of these dates to get Hindenburg his advancement to the rank of "colonelgeneral" on the 27th.

On Sedan Day, 2nd September, 1914,

writes Mr. Garvin, the German people and its troops reached the highest pitch of exaltation and confidence they were to know.

Four days later was fought the Battle of the Marne, by which, though nobody knew it at the time^ Germany lost the War, and of that battle Sir Frederick Maurice has said that the transfer of four German Divisions from Tannenburg to the Marne w.ould have made it a victory for Germany. The commemoration of Tannenburg is something which Britain and France have reason to regard not with resentment but with gratitude. There was, as we have said, nothing provocative in what the German President had to say at Tannenburg but there was certainly nothing help-

On this spot," he said, "I solemnly repudiate that Germany was responsible for the Great War. Neither envy hate, nor lust drove us to unsheathe the sword, but the preservation of our existence from a host of enemies We entered the War with pure hearts and waged it with clean hands."

That Tannenburg is on German soil is presumably evidence that Germany merely fought to protect herself from invasion, but that the Marne is not far from Paris may seem to point to a different conclusion. We are not concerned, however, with the logic of the President's declaration, nor do we question its sincerity, but its timeliness, its tact and its helpfulness are all open to serious challenge. It was not to be expected that Hindenburg, the President of the Republic, would have completely thrown over Hindenburg, the ex-Kaiser's Field-Marshal, in the matter of war-guilt, but this continuity is unfortunately typical of a similar continuity between the present Republic and the old Empire. There was much in M. Poincare's Lurieville speech which shocked the friends of peace, but there was sound logic in his contention that the obstinate insistence of Republican Germany that Imperial Germany was absolutely spotless in regard to both the outbreak and the conduct of the War makes it hard for other nations to believe that the change has really been as fundamental as it is represented to be. President Hindenburg's speech has not poured oil on the troubled waters of Geneva.