Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-10-20
BY n. r. KNICKERBoCKER.

versailles, a series OF DOTnD eX
ploSions, set by agraran Fas
IL cists, has alarmed German!
and stirred abroad the quer!
whether this law-abiding country ha!
adopted nihilism as a political weapon
And today, 10 years after Versailles
one of the nations responsible politica
leaders, Alfred Hugenberg, head of the
second largest party in Germany. the
Nationalist, has started a nationwide
stop payment of reparations under the
Dawes plan and, presumably, to tell the
allies If they want their money to come
and get it,
The two phenomena are not without
relation. Directed Immediately for the
most part against the residences and
Offices Of tax officials in the provinces
the bombs we're indirect blows at the
republic. Directed Immediately against
the Young plan, the Hugenberg refer
endum is an indirect blow at the re-
public. Both are instruments aimed
eventually at overthrowing the govern
nlsnt and establishing a dictatorship.
Aside from general interest in the fate
of the great country. American investors
In German securities particularly may
be interested to know what chance this
aim has of being attained
Beyond their merely theoretical con-
nection, these two phenomena have
another. closer. The arrest of some 80
suspected bomb layers, who at intervals
of a month had detonated explosives in
q dozen public buildings in Holstein.
Hanover and Berlin during the last II
months, revealed that the ringleaders
of the outrages, which began in No
vember, 1928, and eliminated In an at
tempt to blow up the Reichstag last
month, were members of the National
Socialist party, the Fascist party Of
Hitler and Ludendorff, with whom
Hugenberg has established an alliance
for his attack on the Young plan.
Both Moves Pulling.
Both phenomena are difficult to I'M
derstand in view of Germany's past
conduct under adversely, and her pres
erlt condition Of comparative and stead
fly increasing prosperity. The orderly
temper of the people was never better
demonstrated than in the German
revolution. It was bloodless, dry
PutSch," as they call them here. But
now, 10 years later, though the bombs
employed in the Holstein- Hanover Ber-
lin outrages also have caused no blood
shed, the powder behind them probably
exceeded In quantity all that was used
to send Wilhelm scampering to Hol-
land.
The German delegates at Versailles
signed On the dotted line. They pro-
tested, but they signed and taking it
by and large during the last 10 years
they have fulfilled the treaty. Passive
resistance in the Ruhr was their only
overt attempt at resistance. But today
Hugenberg's referendum Is having pop
ular resonance enough to make 1t the
central event in German politics for
the next several months, and it has
the earmarks of the most earnest and
best organized effort at sabotaging the
Versailles treaty since national bank
ruptcy ended passive resistance on the
Ruhr.
Startling enough in itself, the call to
open reputation of the nations inter-
national obligations, accompanied by
the bursting of bombs, becomes more
curious when one examines the relative
1929. For one of the points upon which
Karl Marks most determined critics
are agreed with him is that desperation
is the basis of a revolt. Not many
against capitalist" oppression, but. for
example. against the yoke Of Yer
sailles."
Desperation Somewhere.
The people Of Germany were desper-
ate In 1919. They did not revolt against
the treaty. Today the people Of Ger
many are not desperate. Bombs and
mass meetings, explosive speeches and
a plebiscite against the Young plan are
signs, however. undeniably, of desper-
alton somewhere.
If we may believe the majority of
sober political judges in Germany, they
are signs, not Of popular desperation,
but Of the desperation of few political
leaders Of the extreme Right. Their
desperation has come with the reali-
cation that all those aims they sought
to reach by violence, by counter-revolu-
ton, the setting up of a dictatorship,
the resort to arms, have been either
completely achieved, or so nearly as
makes no matter. by the policy Of
peaceful fulfllment of Germany's in
ternational obligations and reconcile
alton with her former enemies. And
the present demonstration of the Right
parties Is, in the opinion Of the afore-
mentioned sober political judges, only
the last wave of the flag of lost cause,
the cause of reaction.
Compare the man on the street to-
day In Berlin with the same man 10
years ago. There are 5000 Herr Meyers
IN the Berlin city address book We
will take Herr Wilhelm Meyer, of whom
there are $50 examples, and who hap
pens to be an acquaintance Of mine.
On the day the Versailles treaty was
signed Herr Meyer, a Prussian oficial,
A4dd Vic QUIZ VI SlOlIIco, Ills dIII1Y uIl~
form. He had Just been demobilized
together with some 100000 comrades
and came home to his wife and two
children to find them as hungry as he.
They had subsisted largely on horse
knuckle soup and turnip bread for the
last two years. Herr Meyers expert
ences from then until now reflect the
history OF his country, and his reactions
70 them give an index to its future.
Herr Meyer returned from the army
20 capital shaken by revolution, starv-
ing, and bewildered by the turn of fate
that had plunged the nation, but a few
months before full of dreams of victory.
hegemony over Europe, annexations and
glorious end to the four years of war,
INTO hopeless defeat. The treaty just
signed had transferred 5000 900 OF his
fellow citizens to other flags and his
country had diminished to six-seyenths
OF its former size.
Every German Hit.
Too greatly troubled with his own
affairs TO bother about the loss of Ger
man territory Herr Meyer and all his
family felt hit by but one paragraph in
the treaty. They groaned when they
heard that he and his children and
his children's children should labor
from then on to pay tribute to their
conquerors. The worst of it was from
the Meyer standpoint that this pay
ment was to be limitless. bounded only
by the amount that could be squeezed
from them.
The worthy Meyer, however, did not
revolt. He and some tens of millions
like him merely went to work, as Is the
fashion of Germans.
One of his neighbors, however, a
young man of noble birth who lived in
the fashionable upper end of Meyers
street, major in the army, who had
enjoyed with his 10000 brother off,
cars the diStiractinra Of hairncr q l,i,,,no Z,