INTERNATIONAL: ‘Rewards of Victory

This week’s worst news:

Berlin. The official spokesman of the Foreign Office flabbergasted Europe by saying that “Germany still owns all her former colonies,” although she explicitly renounced them in signing the Treaty of Versailles and they are today under British, French and Japanese flags.

London. Information was circulated to the Press by His Majesty’s Government that, during the past two weeks, measures have been taken to raise the armament of the United Kingdom as rapidly as possible by expending $1,500,000,000.

Paris. Government-inspired, General Niessel, late of the French Supreme War Council, charged that the demilitarized Rhineland “safety zone,” established by the Versailles Treaty and confirmed in mutual amity by the Locarno Treaty, has now been partially militarized with 40,000 Germans equipped with machine guns, armored cars, bomb and flame throwers and a signal corps. “The only way to live at peace with a nation possessed of such a passion for violence,” said General Niessel, “is to confront it with force equally strong.”

Significance. From a wholly detached point of view there was “no immediate cause for alarm.” As the dean of French diplomats, Jules Cambon, has said: “The Germans do not want war; all they want is the rewards of victory.”