ARCH-PLOTTER.

Evening Star, Issue 25461, 17 April 1945, Page 4

ARCH-PLOTTER.

Franz von Papen, an arch-conspirator of a cunning and an unscrupulousness seldom exceeded in the pages of any novel is, for the second time, a prisoner in Allied hands, and although he might say plaintively " I cannot imagine what you Americans want with a man sixty-seven years of age," the Allies doubtless will feel happier that he is a prisoner than if he were still at large. Von Papen has that sort of character. His craftiness is too well known for him to be trusted at all by his enemies,. or even wholly by his friends. Intrigue has been the breath of life to him, and though more than once his devious ways have brought him close to disaster, by some chance it has been only his associates who have paid the price. He was German military attache in the United States in the First World War, but he had to leave there hurriedly when he became implicated in bomb plots against American munitions factories. He was soon afterwards a sinister figure behind the Sinn Fein trouble in Ireland, but mainly he concentrated on the whirl of politics inside Germany. He was involved in the decline of the German republic, and he acted as a ' midwife at the birth of National Socialism, although his allegiance to Hitler in the beginning of the vile regime was as changeable as the wind. He helped Hitler to (power, then plotted against the Fuhrer, an episode from which he was indeed fortunate to escape with his life. Several of his immediate contacts in this affair were less fortunate. Hitler, who could use rogues, found work (for von Papen, and he was sent on diplomatic missions to Austria, where, with typical subtlety, he paved the way for the Anschluss. In this war von Papen, as Ambassador to Turkey, has figured most prominently in his schemings to get Turkey to side with Germany. He failed, but that was because the Turks were cautious. Nothing was beyond this former Catholic, who sold German Catholics to the Nazis, to attempt, as the alleged Soviet bombing outrage of March, 1942, goes to prove. Von Papen was, in this story which was never substantiated, the victim of a bombing plot, a bomb being thrown at him supposedly by a Russian. If von Papen is wrongfully accused when a deliberate attempt to sow discord between Turkey and the Soviet _ is charged against him, he has only himself to blame. It js certain that following the alleged attempt relations between Turkey and Russia were strained for some time., Von Papen earned his money by the diligence with which he tried to swing Turkey into Germany's hands. His oily tongue worked hard, and no doubt he more than once thought he was about to achieve as spectacular a success with the Ottoman State as he had with his Austrian efforts. He made one mistake that incurred the displeasure of the Wilhelmstrasse when in November, [ 1941, he said that Germany wanted Turkey to remain neutral so that she could act as a mediator between Britain and Germany when Russia was deIfeated. Whether he then let a diplomatic cat but of the bag, or was merely talking, may never be known, but he was snarply rapped over the knuckles for an indiscretion. Commentators have long asserted that, .should the crash of Nazism become inescapable, von Papen would emerge as an emissary of peace, as the founder of a new Germany, and it is well within the bounds of reason that the tortuous mind of this ageing man had at least conceived some sucn prospect. But any hopes will have. been dashed now through his capture, though he would have been an optimistic man indeed had he, in view of his unenviable reputation, expected any word of his to be accepted.