Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-06-04

! has all the adv intages incident to
| position and the natural interdepend-
| ence of her industrial plant with the
! agrarian resources of the other Central
European countries, she also suffers
| from certain grave handicaps. The war
drained her of her liquid capital, the
| postwar experiences OF imitation de-
! stroyed her middle class, the onset Of
! the world crisis, most severely felt in
| Germany. produced social and political
| effects which may yet bring about the
| collapse of the whole German govern
mental framework. Her industrial
| plant is in perfect shape, her technique
| of production is admirable, but weighted
down with the burden of reparations
payments, compelled to produce greatly
under conditions involving progress
| Sive lowering of the national standard
of living she is totally unable to carry
on single handed. She must borrow
abroad to live ct home.
But where? America is not lending
in Europe. Britain is unable to help.
| There remains France, but to get
money in France, Germany must agree
to political conditions which in fact
amount to the acceptance of the
French conception. In a word, Ger
many must accept her present frontiers
as permanent, her disbarred state as
final and consent to act French
written role in French directed Eu-
ropean drama. And that is impossible
for any German government. The ats
tempt to meet French ideas even mod
erately killed Stresemann and he could
have no successor in the present tenn
per of the despairing and passionately
excited German millions.
German Collapse Feared.
There is, then, in Germany the pat
ent possibility that either there will
be an economic collapse resulting from
the impossibility to proceed without
foreign aid, or political explosion due
to an enforced submission by the exist
ing government to French terms. No
one of the informed public men with
whom I talked in Europe deemed it
possible to exclude the possibility Of
some form of German collapse or ex-
plosion, the effect of which would be
felt from Hamburg to ConStantinople.
Meantime the immediate effect of
this Franco-German deadlock is pro-
greSsive economic and even moral dis
indignation in all of Central Europe.
Returning to Berlin, Vienna and Buda-
pest after three years of absence, I
found nothing more striking than the
unanimity of the testimony from all
Sides from foreign diplomats and jour-
n2liStS quite as much as from domeS-
tic bankers and business men, that
Europe is going to the dogs
After more than full decade of eX-
pertinent with the system set up by the
Paris peace treaties in Central Europe,
no objective Investigator could fail to
arrive at the conclusion that the system
has broken down, that as a result of
the breakdown political, economic and
social disintegration is proceeding with
appalling rapidity The single peril
nent inquiry is whether cooperation
can replace chaos in time.
Americans from q distance might
easily gather the impression that all
the various pending projects of Euro
pean cooperation and combination
represent. some coherent effort to deal
with the situation. But attendance
upon the most insignificant of inter-
national meetings instantly discloses the
utter anarchy which lies behind the
carefully worded official statements de-
signed to disguise futility and failure
1t is this total failure to arrive at
any adjustment between political forces
and economic facts, this progressive
disintegration on one hand combined
with unbrcken paralysis on the other,
which has resulted in the raising of
the question as to the future of CAPT.
talistic civilization. And if there is any
solid basis for optimism it arises from
the fact that the possible danger is at
last being recognized from one end
OF Europe to the other.
(copyright, 1881, Mcclure Newspaper syndi-
dicate.)