Communications

...As I pointed out in The Commonweal, in The Paradox of Open Diplomacy, agreements between nations are reached more than ever before by trial and error and the final expression of the desires of nations gradually become articulate...

...It is quite clear to those who have been able to follow the sequence of events with personal knowledge of men and national characteristics involved, that the will to break through the war spirit has been sincere and that those who have addressed themselves to an almost superhuman problem have been sincere, piercing through a little, each in his turn, though apparently failing in the main objective...

...Does history yield a more dramatic story than the entry into Vilna...

...a policy pushed with consummate patience toward fruition by the United States, England, and Germany, and finally acceded to by France...

...United Europe, it is clear, has no desire to do without America...

...The public press must have considered it undiplomatic for Death's ambassador to present his credentials in a place so prosaic as Passaic, New Jersey...

...It is easier to believe (particularly since the record points that way) that facing it from the beginning, they have put forth every effort to assist in reconstructing a Europe with which it ie possible to deal on the grand scale required by the 8oiution of problems of such unprecedented magnitude...

...The funeral dirge voicing its sorrow and regret, as the shepherd comes to the flock he never guarded, will have triumph for its theme...

...of each citizen, good German, good Frenchman, good Englishman, each a good member of his own nation, "each one also a citizen of Europe, linked tOgCthW by the great conception of civilization which imbues our continent...

...Perceptible throughout has been the desire of all peoples for security, peace, life, and comfort, inarticulate at first but gradually piercing the fog of hatred and distrust (partly inherited, partly taught, partly deliberately fostered for war purposes) until, vocal at last, it has become the key-note and dominant motif of international negotiators...

...so high is the valuation which they place upon Americans financial geniUS and resources that to them a funding of the reparations engineered in the United States is not inconceivable, carrying with it a practical cancellation of war debts—or rather, a bookkeeping transaction having that ostensible effect...

...The principle of arbitration* has gained ground slowly over insistence on "security from aggression...

...There is no reason to suppose tnat either Washington Or thOSe private Citizens upon whom would devolve the "expert" leadership in that event, are Wind to that issue...

...Stability is what is wanted...

...Our relative isolation makes it difficult to do other-wise...

...That need not fill America with apprehension...

...or with regard to France that, "carried away by the glamor of a military ascendancy greater than that of Napoleon or of Louis XIV, and its consequent political potentialities, she has been obstructive until, terrified by her financial debacle, she has come to terms...

...Not Only dO ttlCSC agreements eliminate as far as is now humanly possible a principal secular irritation among European nations —the Rhine...

...There is no doubt that European unity will have its effect on Russia...

...William Franklin Sands...

...It is perhaps not too much to say that the importance of the Dawes Plan lay, from the very beginning of the growth of the idea, not so much in actual reparations payments to the countries concerned as in the gradual liquidation of distrust and hostility...

...Quite conceivably it may develop that it is not possible to make any such payments as have been heretofore advanced as irreducible, as> minima...

...It is not fair to impute unworthy motives to the negotiators who, with varying success, have plodded step by step toward a goal...

...An interesting argument advanced as inducement to Americans set forth that the regular work attendant upon such a monthly shipment over a long...

...In European minds, debt settlements are already inextricably tied to reparations, and both are bound up with a continued participation in European affairs by the United States...

...Quite naturally many Europeans do not wish to be dominated Dy America or by any other national P0W6T...

...the uncalculating expressions of that joy lead inevitably to equal depression upon public realization that the Locarno agreements are not, and cannot be, final...

...The Locarno Conference was not, and could not be, a spontaneous gushing forth of benevolence doing away forever with suspicion and intrigue...

...Dawes...

...To my mind, it is of the highest value to both the United States and Europe to have as many Americans understand the inner workings of "open diplomacy" as is consistent with continuity and efficiency...

...There is a tendency in America to doubt the efficacy of the Dawes Plan in operation...

...One hears regret that they have changed so frequently...

...When men sit down in a quiet corner to find a way out of a situation, and their constituencies, in the distance, demand of them that they find it, they will find it...

...It has made possible the further step in reconstruction provided by the nine documents initialed at Locarno last October and signed at London on December 1, 1925...

...Was ever bishop inducted to his Cathedral in a coffin, as a carriage of state, to find his throne a catafalque...

...The joy with which the Locarno agreements were hailed proves quite conclusively the power behind their adoption...

...HIS THRONE A CATAFALQUE New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—Your editorial in The Commonweal for March 3 on the death of Archbishop Cieplax is food for Lenten meditation...

...Even these non-official "experts" were not exempt from the influence of political experiments and the distrust of uniformed and narrow views, until, at the London Reparation* Conference, arbitration was provided for in no less than seventeen visible cases where disputes might interfere with the carrying out of the Experts' Plan...

...nor to the governments and peoples they represent...

...We are prone to form our conclusions from what others have written (as Hilaire Belloc says, "from over-worked men who can get all they want March 24, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL SS3 out of other professors' books and who only have to teach young people who generally possess not the least reading...

...It may be said that the principal, if not the sole function of Americans connected with the reparations problem, from "unofficial observers" to "the Citizen of the United States of America, member of the Reparations Committee by virtue of the Inter-Allied Agreement of August 30, 1924," has been to act as a solvent of the differences within the commission itself as well as of the mutual antipathies and distrusts between the still hostile parties concerned...

...His requiem was heard the world over...

...They Sfifi flO Wiy in which the United States can avoid the issuer—and here there is matter for thought in President Coolidge's recent remarks upon the Senate's attitude to the Italian debt-funding agreement...

...The main problem facing Mr...

...Lloyd George's remark that "the wine of Locarno is already badly corked, due to this unfortunate series of incidents," is witty—but I am not sure that it is quite worthy of his astuteness except for opposition purposes...

...The first definite gain, publicly recognized as a gain, was the decision to place the formulation of "a way out" upon "experts," upon private citizens with no hampering constituencies, who immediately upon appointment violated their instructions and faced not theories but facts, embodying their visualization of these facts and their consequences in the report of the committee over the signature of their chairman, Mr...

...All these things have doubtless been present in men's minds in all three countries, and quite possibly have had some influence upon the parochially minded in our own country with reactive influence upon America's efforts to aid in the reconstruction of civilization...

...Our weakness lies in positive assertion based only on second- and third-hand presentation, without the sensitiveness to inner meaning, to the psychology of nations and of individuals which only long personal contact can give—contact certainly made more intimate by reasonable fluency in the languages in which national tkougkr aftJ feeling are1 eJ&fefifieu...

...The ground covered in six years becomes plain by contrasting this statement of the responsible statesmen gathered at Locarno, each of whom emphasized the desire of his own people for this result, with that quotation I have taken above from President Wilson, used by the Allies in a reply to the "Comments by the German Delegation on the Conditions of Peace": "The reason why peace must be guaranteed is that there will be parties to the peace whose promises have proved untrustworthy...

...And it suggests another thought: how curiously the world measures heroism...

...the principle, as Herr Stresemann said at Locarno, "of a European idea...

...The more credit to them for having made so much of solid achievement against such oc*ds...

...Both the Experts' Plan and the agreements made at Locarno on October 16, 1925, and signed at London on December 1, are part of the same policy constantly interrupted, persistently held to...

...Locarno is only a step, though a vitally important step—it is a step made possible by the Experts1 Plan of April 9, 1924 (the Dawes Plan) to which, in turn, advance was made by years of tentative agreement, opposition, and failure...

...The Operation Of the Dawes Plan may now be counted as successful, though some of the major problems are still unsolved...

...There are, it is to be noted, many Europeans of intelligence who believe that America's enormous and ever increasing commitments in Germany point the way out...

...To this stage, from wklck it Js possible to envisage a real advance, the agreements of Locarno, the definite "spirit of Locarno" have laid the foundation...

...It is no more fair to say that "England can afford to be generous to a stricken enemy deprived of fleets and colonies" than it is to say what was said with regard to Germany (September 27, 1918 and June 16, 1919) that "the reason why peace must be guaranteed is that there will be parties to the peace whose promises have proved untrustworthy...

...much more important, they restore to Europe a principle -which was the basis of Christendom in "the Jark ages," w ken Ckr^flan Eufope loflklu UDM1 itMlf 28 2 i hh h g p D M 28 2 family Of nations in Which the Pope, as spiritual father, should arbitrate differences...

...How to cancel has superseded, in urgency of appeal, how to collect from Germany...

...I am not sure that it is not equally doubtful to some of those American statesmen who have acquiesced in the spirit of isolation forced upon them by an apparent popular opinion...

...there is equally no doubt that European unity will have its effect upon the United States...

...period would stabilize our coal industry and tend to minimize, by steady work, the annual disturbance of miners' strikes...

...One of these problems affecting the United States directly is what may well be called the determination of Europe to lock and weld reparations and war debts in the very manner that President Wilson undertook to do with ^gard to the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations...

...It is inconceivable that having put forth every effort to effect this very end, Washington statesmen should not be well aware of the implications of the end achieved...

...the principle of a common European interest, and the desire of states "inspired by peaceful intentions to introduce into their relations a spirit of confidence, good faith, and good will...

...Both were heroes in the fight for principle—one on the spectacular battle field of nations, the other on a tragic battle field of faith...

...Parker Gilbert is that of the effect on exchange^ on stability, of the transfer of sums such as have been contemplated, even if they are collectable...

...not only do they introduce a system of settling among the group of nations concerned, all their disputes in future by arbitration and such other means as are provided by the League of Nations...

...They look to Germany and to France to produce the situation which would focus the attention of voters on the nwd for immediate action---not in bad faith, but inevitably, as the unavoidable result of ill-conceived reparations demands...

...With such positive advance in European unity, certain further problems are less alarming than they would have been...

...What a contrast to the passing of the great Mercier, as the world hoped and waited, and then in reverence bowed its head...

...It is not out of place to note that we, and the European nations concerned, have been peculiarly fortunate in the type of Americans drawn into this problem...

...its major purpose, reduction of distrust and hostility by cooperation in finding a way out, will nevertheless have been achieved in measurable degree...

...Whether the "European idea," the idea of a Europe with a common interest, a common ideal, and a common sense of justice and generosity can be translated into fact without the continuing cooperation of the United States, is doubtful to many in Europe, and to some here...

...So great was this post-war state of nerves that when Germany had begun to ship coal to France as payment in kind, a section of French public men saw therein new cause for alarm, and actually proposed the purchase in America and shipment to France of 1,000,000 tons of coal a month, at the then high price of American coal, lest France might become dependent upon German shipments and Germany one day shut down and paralyze French life...

...Even should this particular problem prove insoluble in the manner contemplated when the plan became operative, it may not then be said that the Dawes Plan will have failed...