# The New York Times/1929/10/24/Germans Fear Change in Policy

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Germans Fear Change In Policy.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
BERLIN, Oct. 23.—German official and Parliamentary quarters and press opinion make no concealment of their concern over the French Cabinet crisis and its solution. While a faint streak of optimism supports the hope that Aristide Briand, "the man of peace," will either head the new Ministry or again hold the Foreign Office portfolio, there is a conviction that the existing political controversy in Paris gravely affects the prospects of an early ratification of the Hague protocol with respect to the Young plan and some of its urgent concomitant issues.
A French Cabinet crisis was about the last thing the present German coalition government had bargained for in the existing state of its own domestic difficulties, as M. Briand's unexpected upset virtually leaves unanswered a question of decisive importance to the German Government: Will the new French Ministry vouchsafe the continuity of the foreign policies championed by M. Briand since the consummation of his almost unprecedented rapprochement with the late German Foreign Minister, Dr. Gustav Stresemann?
The retiring French Premier comes in for some pointed criticism in the German press, a section of which accuses him of primarily being a tactician.
"Had M. Briand been a straightline champion of European reconciliation, as which he invariably desired to be hailed, he would not have found it necessary to ask the Chamber's confidence," observes The Socialist Vorwaerts, while the Boersenzeitung assumes that he has become the victim of his own equivocation. To other political organs the French crisis suggests that France may yet prove to be an extremely unsafe and vacillating partner in future negotiations.
Official quarters expect that negotiations over the Sarre Basin will begin on Monday in Paris, as the French Government recently informed the German Foreign Office that preliminary difficulties were now removed and that there was no reason why active negotiations could not be initiated forthwith. This, however, presupposes that the reparations powers and Germany will again meet at The Hague according to schedule for the purpose of ratifying the protocol covering the Young plan and its allied issues, one of the chief of which concerns the ultimate evacuation of the Rhineland by next mid-year or earlier.
Vital to Reich Coalition.
If the German Government's anticipations in this respect should come to naught, it is plain that the existing French crisis, in the event that its outcome puts a new complexion on French policies, is bound to have serious repercussions in Germany, where a somewhat loosely-riveted coalition cabinet is staking its existence on an early and unquivocal solution of such cardinal issues as the adoption of the Young plan, a complete liquidation of the Rhine land occupation and an acceptable disposition of the fate of the Sarre Basin.
Combined, they represent the political legacy of Dr. Stresemann to his country, and the circumstance that their realization should be placed in jeopardy less than three weeks after his death through the political overthrow of the French statesman to whose cooperation and fraternity the late Foreign Minister was largely indebted for Franco-German rapprochement gives a melancholy tinge to German contemplation of what the immediate political future holds in store.