Foreign News: Yoke Lifted

Pretty little Rhineland towns like Bad Schwalbach and Koenigstein bade stolid, silent farewells last week to British troops who have been quartered in the vicinity of Wiesbaden all through the decade since the War.

According to the Treaty of Versailles the troops would have stayed until Jan. 30, 1935, but at the Hague Conference where the Young Plan was adopted and British Chancellor Snowden got his piece of “spongecake” (TIME, Sept. 9), the whole theory of Rhineland occupations was scrapped and Britain, France and Belgium agreed to withdraw the last of their troops before June 30, 1930.

The Britons who moved out last week were early birds, first of a host of evacuations which will keep moving all through the early winter. Cheerfully their bands blared “Tipperary,” “John Brown’s Body,” and even “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love—Baby!” But the Rhineland villagers and the citizens of Wiesbaden stood lowering, glum. Only at Koenigstein did the local mayor pay a grudging honest tribute.

“I do not need to emphasize” he said, “that Koenigstein’s population hails this day of liberation from the foreign yoke. How we have longed for the day! I must, however, declare that the British troops did not make life as hard for us as some French troops who were quartered on us previously!”