GERMANY: Allied Evacuation

Last week the German Government despatched an urgent note to the Allies in which it acceded to all the concessions which had been demanded before the Allies would consent to evacuate Cologne, and asked that the evacuation be carried out at once.

The German concessions: 1) Curtailment of the authority of General von Seeckt, autocratic head of the German Reichswehr. 2) The famed German military police to be demilitarized, and their characteristic green uniform replaced by that of the ordinary police. 3) The German Government to suppress the military training now being given to members of “athletic societies” throughout the Reich.

The Allied answer was despatched by the Council of Ambassadors at Paris, which is charged with carrying out the terms of the Versailles Treaty. At a special session, hastily summoned, Marchal Foch and other Allied military experts sanctioned the termination of Allied military surveillance in the Rhineland. The Government of the Reich was officially informed that Cologne would be evacuated on Dec. 1, and that the Allied civil administration of the Rhineland would be terminated in the immediate future.

Widespread relief was felt throughout Germany at this development, and it was generally considered that the Government’s chances for securing ratification of the Locarno Treaties by the Reichstag had been greatly improved.

Heretofore the Nationalists have cried that the Allies were not “keeping faith” with Germany, and Herr Stresemann has been severely embarrassed by taunts that at Locarno he had “swallowed” Allied promises to evacuate the Rhineland which would never be kept.

Last week, with a big caucus of the Nationalists scheduled to meet in a few days, and with the Reichstag slated to assemble very shortly, it was apparently felt by both the Cabinet of the Reich and the Allies that some immediate show of mutual faith was in order.

During the week Admiral von Tirpitz fulminated against the Locarno Treaties and cynically remarked, “Might will always go before right.”

President von Hindenburg, on the other hand, was reported to have scored the Nationalists privately as “bulls in a china shop,” and exclaimed: “So! First these Nationalists assured me that I am their spokesman, and now I find myself standing alone, my position endangered!”

He is generally considered to be in harmony with such “liberal Nationalists” as Herr Karl Haniel, Dusseldorf millionaire, and Prince Fuerstenberg, intimate of the onetime Kaiser. The “industrial and noble group” to which these men belong issued a manifesto supporting the Locarno Treaties last week.

Commented Georg Bernhard, leading Liberal publicist, in the Vossische Zeitung:

“Nobody doubts that the regime now existing under Hindenburg’s leadership in Germany, does not match his personal inclination. If he could rule without the bonds imposed by his Constitutional oath, he might manage many things differently. But with him, sworn duty is something holy. Therefore it is self-evident that relying on his Chancellor and Ministers he should regard the Locarno policy as progress along the hard road leading to the recovery of Germany’s freedom of action. It is easy to understand that this fact leaves the Nationalists helplessly confused. In the Presidential campaign they raised the authority of Hindenburg’s person so high that they naturally fear to be crushed if the full weight of his authority now falls on them.”