Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1925-12-19
By FRANK III. SIMONDS.

The current number Of Foreign AT
fairs carries the inevitable answer of
a German to the defense of himself
and of the French case generally with
respect OF war responsibility which
.eX-PreSident Poincare published some
Tune ago in the same magazine. Poin-
care effort was not very distinguish
ed, and the German answer is hardly
more impressive. The author of the
German answer is the former chan
cellor, William Marx, who is perhaps
better remembered as the unsuccess-
fui candidate of the republican parties
for President last Spring, when old
Marshal Hindenburg won his notable
and temporarily disturbing triumph.
A member of the Catholic Center
and loyal and sincere champion of
the republic, Marx has never been a
very imposing figure, and the i'm
portance of his article. so far as it has
importance, lies in the passionate re-
pudiation of the charge of exclusive
war guilt, written into the treaty of
Versailles, a denial which expresses
the unanimous view of the democratic
as well as the monarchiStic elements
In Germany.
Extreme Stupidity.
In point of fact this particular in
dictment. which the Germans signed
only under duress and in the face of
an alternative which was appalling,
might easily be reckoned the supreme
stupidity Of the famous Paris docu-
ment. 1t expressed a wartime state
of mind which even now is a bit hard
to understand, and doubtless will sur
vive only as indicating how far the
sense of proportion of reasonable peo-
pie is DESTROYED by war
The notion of a criminal people
conSpiring under the leadership of
archcriminal masters to let loose the
world calamity has long ago been rel
egated to the dust heap. We know
now that William II, who once took
on such colossal and terrible proper
lions, was after all only vaingloried.
noisy, vulgar, but, to give him his
due, essentially peace-loving He was
a good deal of a fool and almost as
much of a coward. But he was above
all incapable of the sort of undertak-
ing which Frederick the Great carried
through when he stole SileSia from
Maria Theresa.
AS for Bethmann-Hollweg so far
from being a conspirator, he was an
honest man, who did his ineffective
bit for peace, and could not forbear
to blurt out the uncomfortable truth
when events were too much for him.
Bismarck could edit an Ems dispatch
and make the Franco-Prussian war,
but Bethmann w asnot a bismarck:
he feared war. he struggled to prevent
it, and he feared the worst, rather
preSciently, when at last it came. If
Bismarck was the iron chancellor
Bethmann was willow at most.
Younger Moltke.
There remains in the triumvirate
which used to keep us awake nights
contemplating Teutonic Superhuman
malevolence the younger Moltke. But
as to him, we know now that in six
weeks he took the finest army that
Germany or any other country ever
produced, the finest fighting machine
of human history, to utter and lrrevo-
cable disaster. And much of that dis
aSter was due to his infirmity of pur-
pose, to the ineptitude which was
concealed behind the name which had
evoked Sadowa and Mars-la-Tour,
Sedan and Metz.
With the legend that the war was
the result of a plot of these essen
TALLY weak men, no one of them haV-
ing the stuff that real monsters are
made of, the world is already done.
The idea that whole nation can be
indicted for collective wickedness,
which was denied by Burke, is now
denied by most sensible people. The
conception of a pariah people fingers
only in the backwaters of prejudice.
Locarno supplies a pretty clear in
6seation of the change of world SEN
timent.
With the part of Marks article,
therefore, which Is devoted to the pro-
test against the injustice of such an
indictment and the bowling folly OIL
forcing the Germans to sign 1t, II Is
easy to have unlimited sympathy.
This part of the treaty of Versailles
is already "caput" for all practical
purposes, although there is no con-
ceivable fashion in which it can be
solemnly denounced as the German
Nationalists keep demanding for OBJ
vious purposes. While the world
that is, the allied world-acted as II
this indictment was still in force, the
German people had a grievance, a
real grievance. But recent events in
London, when Luther and Stresemann
went to the British capital to sign the
Locarno pact, show how effectively
dead letter this thing has become.
BIames France and Russia.
But Marx, like most other defend
erS of Germany, is not content with
disclaiming what hardly requires dis
claimer now-namely, the notion of
peculiar, exclusive and criminal guilt
belonging to a whole people-but I'M
dertakes, in addition, to demonstrate
that, while Germany was innocent,
there was a criminal; that, in fact,
there were at least two criminals