Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-01-01
BY WILLIAM BIRD.

4 out major event of interna-
! tional Importance, and yet the
| year has been without any startling
surprises. There has been striking
progress along lines that had already
been laid down-and this encourages
the hope that Europe has emerged from
| the chaos of 10 years ago and Is now
definitely on the march toward peace
and prosperity. But 1t would be foolish
to ignore the clashes and conflicts that
ere always latent on the old Continent
| and may at any moment break out in
the most unexpected places.
| Germany and France have developed
| and consolidated the Democratic policy
of mutual confidence and cooperation.
and not even the untimely death OF
! StreSemann nor the overthrow of the
BRAND cabinet has checked this move
ment in the slightest. The new Ger
man foreign minister, DR.. Curtius. has
| adopted Stresemann's policy in its en-
tirety, and has received an overwhelm-
| ing vote of confidence in the Reich
stag despite the almost incredible cam
paign of the Fascists and Royalists, who
seek to destroy the bases of the New
europe and return to the animcsities of
before the war.
Brands downfall as premier only
| served to prove how unanimous the
French nation is in approving his efforts
| for peace-for in the cabinet crisis
which followed, all parties. from Left to
Right, excepting only a tiny fringe at
each extreme, agreed that, whoever
might head the new government BRAND
! must remain at the foreign office. And
| this resolution held good oven when
Andre Tardieu, who once called 3ri1nd'S
policy that of dead dog driTi ing with
| the current" took command Of the
| ship of state.
Two More Dictstorshirs.
! But against this consolidation of
democratic ideals in the two chief con-
! tinental countries, we have to set the
| fact that two more countries have been
| ships. King Alexander of Serbia,
weary of interracial strife in the
Kaleidoscope kingdom of the Serbs,
| Croats and Slovenes, swept democratic
| institutions into the discard, dissolved
the Parliament and appointed dhimself
| absolute monarch. Austria, too, got tired
| of being the foot ball of Socialism and
Fascism, and put her national affairs
| in the hands of the former chief OF
police. whose program is to make
| the streets safe for everybody-Whlch
| means decidedly unsafe for Socialist
| agitators
Another factor that the Continent
regards as disquieting is the return Of
! Labor to power in England It's an odd
| thing, but although British Labor
| claims to be Internationalist, 1t has
more trouble getting along with its con-
| tiental neighbors than the Imperial
list" parties do. Conservative govern
ments since the war have made friend
ship with France the corner stone OF
their foreign policy but Labor, since 1t
| came into power in June, has been
pulling and hauling to get that stone
| out of the building, with the grave risk
| of bringing the whole edit1ce down
| about their ears. The clue to- this
| DANGEROUS Labor mania is to be found
i in the Labor party's wartime paclnSm,
when if you had read the LABOR pu3n.
| cations YOU might have thought that
/ England was fighting France ard not
| Germany.
Labor "Shines Up" to U. s.
To can its internationalist inconsist-
ency. Socialistic Labor has been shining
up to the most capitalist and least
| internationalist of all governments,
| that of our own United States. Prime
Minister Macdonalds first dlpiomatlc
| move was to receive our new AmoaS-
| sador. Gen. Dawes, at his LosSiemouth
home, and then to announce that he
| himself would run over to washington
! to call on Mr.. Hoover. What all this
| SIGNIFIES, of course, is that England's
| age-old mastery of the sea is passing
| into history, and if the empire is to be
preserved it will be necessary to keep
| on the best of terms with America.
| One of the most picturesque nap
peniugs of the year was the conclusion
| of the Lateran treaty, under which the
Pope, after nearly 60 years captivity,
again becomes a temporal monarch. IL
| cannot be said, however, that relations
| between Italy and the Vatican nave
been at all improved by this treaty
on the contrary, the differences be-
tween Mussolini and Pope Plus have
never been so openly declared on both
sides as since the Lateran treaty was
signed. The Pope fatty refuses to rec
ognize Mussolini's right to place all
education in the hands Of the State,
and he particularly~rebels against the
Duces decree forbidding the church to
organize the Catholic youth into
Catholic Boy Scout troops, file and
drum corps, sewing circles. and what
not, ordaining that no such organiza-
tons must exist except those officially
promoted by the Fascist government.
Holy City Outranks Quirinal.
One development that Mussolini APP
narently failed to foresee is that since
the Pope regained his temporal power
the principal governments of the world
now maintain two full-fledged en-
baSSie5 in Rome, and that in most
cases they regard the embassy to the
Vatican as outranking the embassy to
the Quirinal. This places Rome, the
Holy City, on plane somewhat higher
than the Rome of the Caesars, now
ruled by Caesar Augustus Dux Musso-
lini, and creates a most irritating situ-
alton.
The adoption of the Young plan,
after months of patient labor by the
pick of the worlds banking brains, is
of course the most important thing that
has happened on the international CAL
endar of 1929. The idea of the plan
is to convert the political debts created
by the peace treaties into commercial
debts, 1. e., to give the investing public
chance to underwrite the separations
payments due from Germany and her
allies to her eX-enemieS. What hap
pens is that Germany gives promissory
notes for her future reparations to the
international bank of payments set up
by the Young plan. The bank cuts
these notes up into handy sizes to fit
every pocketbook and sells them to the
public. turning the proceeds over to
France, England, Italy, ct al When
that is done everybody IS ''appy: the
allied governments have the money,
GermanyS Rhine provinces are eVacu-
ated, the public draws generous interest
on its outlay
There are two possible bitches in
this scheme. The first is immediate:
Will the investing public buy the paper?
The slump in the American market
since October has created some strin-
gency which impairS the prospects for
floating any vast part of this paper in
the United States, and it is no secret
that Europe hopes most of the money
to underwrite Germany's debt will
come from this side of the water The