HERR STRESEMANN

Waipa Post, Volume 51, Issue 3694, 6 December 1935, Page 3

HERR STRESEMANN

A GREAT POST-WAR GERMAN. LIBERAL STATESMAN AND PEACE-MAKER. (By 11. A.) The man: A typical Berliner of the lcwer middle classes. Social, romantic and deeply religious. A lover of talk and literature, of good food and good wine. Bulky, genial but unhealthy. A finely cut mouth and shapely nose discounted by watery, bloated skin. Ruddy cheeks compressing expressive eyes. Hands small and delicate “like those of a beautiful woman.” A voice clear, sharp and penetiating like a trumpet. The pen portrait is of a post-war German who was really great—Gustav Stresemann, Liberal politician, Chancellor during the stormiest hundred days, Foreign Minister during the period before Hitlerism, when Germany was gradually regaining her place in the concert of nations. Stresemann, son of a retail beer merchant, typified Germany in the eyes of the world for six anxious, difficult years. Some of the most fascinating “ifs” of modern history are suggested by his record. “If” he had had a little longer opportunity, Germany might have been rebuilt as a great democratic nation; “if” he had lived there might have been an entirely different tale to tell in respect to the League of Nations, and all those problems that distract the unquiet Europe of to-day. If he were not the last of the Liberals, he was the last to exert a powerful influence in the councils of the nation. But he died comparatively young, whereas the tide of Nazism swept over and obliterated most of his work.

“The main thing from the point of view of a healthy workman, or a man in the prime of life, is to provide him with sufficient employment to enable him to improve his own position and that of his family.” On that Liberal statement of faith Stresemann built his political philosophy almost from his youth. Like a great English statesman Beaconsfield the beer merchant's son owed much of his success to a sublimely happy marriage. Himself incapable of managing his affairs, and, like Disraeli, always pleading frugal needs but invariably choosing the best of everything, he relied entirely on Frau Stresemann for protection from the material harassments of life. On one occasion in the days of his greatness an ambassadress remarked to him, “How beautiful your wife in looking to-night.” “To-night!” replied Hie Foreign Minister in tones of sometiling like astonishment, “My wife is always beautiful.”

A National Liberal during the war, and an intensely patriotic German, Stresemann emerged after the war as one of the leaders of the People’s party, which was intended to be a centre party, constituting a political equipoise between the hostile extremes of Left and Right. Already from both extremes the danger of revolution and civil war threatened, and before long it was to become an imminent peril. It was in 1923 that Stresemann’s hour came, and he formed the Cabinet which is known in German political history as the Great Coalition. But for Germany it was probably the blackest hour. Imagine the situation! Inflation had just then reached its dizziest limits, and the currency was worthless. Famine menaced the entire nation. The Communist peril in central Germany threatened to overwhelm the country. The “war of passive resistance” against the French occupation of the Ruhr had been lost, bringing deeper humiliation upon Germany, whose people were thoroughly downcast. The French were still turning the screw. Internal politics were confused and bitter. Strikes were frequent; civil war seemed almost certain.

Surely few statesmen have undertaken a task more gigantic and seemingly impossible of achievement. Stresemann began with a reaffirmation of his faitli in Liberalism, democratic self-government and individual freedom. “In the present democratic age,” he said, “battles can be won only with the support of public opinion of the country.” His aims were to rebuild a strong intellectual middle class in Germany, which he ..regarded as the backbone of the nation, and to map out a path for his defeated country by fulfilling to the greatest possible extent the obligations of the treaty of Versailles. In a letter to General Smuts lie admitted that Germany was ready to bear the heaviest burdens, but insisted that all burdens were impracticable if the Reich was to be further dismembered by the policy of France and the German people deprived of the means of their subsistence.

As Chancelolr, and later as Foreign Minister, Stresemann became closely associated with Lord d’Abernon, the British Ambassador in Berlin, and the documented records of that period show that these two statesmen, working in friendly cooperation, were largely responsible for a gradually improved understanding between Britain and Germany. Always an ardent German and never losing an opportunity to denounce in the fiercest terms what to the end he called the “war guilt lie,” Stresemann realised that there was no wisdom in “rattling an empty scabbard.”

During the hundred days Hitler made his first bid for power in Bavaria, which was one of the States in a condition of distress and revolt. The “putsch” occurred on Bth November, and the language of the dictator-to-be did not differ greatly from that which lie uses to-day. At a meeting in Munich, after lie had secured silence by firing off a revolver, Hitler proclaimed himself head of a new National Government, with Ludendorff as commander of the army. Next day, however, the “rising” expired. Ludendorff was captured and sent to a fortress. Hitler evaded arrest by flight in a motor car. But out of that incident with its tame ending developed the Germany of to-day and the extinction of all that Stresemann stood for in foreign relations, as well as internal constitutional government.

“As long as we do not shake off 1 lie spirit of the exchange bureaus and the liquor shops and get back to the spirit of old Prussia, and a stern and moral view of life,” said Stresemann in denouncing the first, Hitler outbreak, “we have no right to salvation and resurrection.”

Stresemann as Chancellor was responsible for the return to Germany of the Crown Prince, and he staunchly defended Wilhelm against both home and foreign critics, claiming that the world had not had a more distorted picture of any man than of him. “History teaches us,” he said, “never to judge a future ruler by his life as heir to the throne. What sort of a picture would (lie world have had of Edward VII. if be had died as Prince of Wales?” When his Cabinet fell Stresemann became, for the remainder of his life, the “permanent” Foreign Minister. Whatever the character of succeeding Governments that post was his. He set out to achieve his major objective in life —the mitigation and ultimate removal of the age-long antagonism ber.ween French and German. He originated the suggestion for a mutual guarantee by England, France and Germany, out of which came the pact of Locarno. The following year, 1026, Germany joined the League of Nations, and at Geneva Stresemann assiduously cultivated the French statesman, Briand. Substantial propress was being made until Stresemann overcalled bis hand by making a speech dealing with “war guilt” and the return of colonies. This utterance was a blunder which upset arrangements already well advanced for a friendly settlement between France and Germany, and the German Minister suffered a reverse over which lie brooded until the end of his life. Though his health failed, he was able lo participate in the signing of the Kellog Pact, under which the nations undertook to repudiate war as an inSii'iunenl of policy. Late in 1920 lie made his last appearance at Geneva, and in October he died after an apoplectic stroke at Ibe age of fil years.

Germany lias been through I be lire of revolution, and Siresemann’s dream of a united nation demoerati-

tally governed lias faded away. His record, as set. out in an absorbingly interesting volume just published by Macmillan and Co., Ltd., proves clearly that his early death was a serious loss to his country and to Europe. While lias hand was on the helm be saved his defeated, humiliated and bitterly resentful country from dismemberment, chaos and ruin.