Gustav Stresemann

...President Hindenburg has thus offered the best possible guarantee that Stresemann's policy of conciliation which has proved so fruitful for the Reich and the world at large, is not to be interrupted-certainly not as long as Hindenburg remains President of the Reich...

...GUSTAV STRESEMANN By JOHANNES MATTERN IN THE universal expression of sympathy at the untimely death of Gustav Stresemann there was revealed the realization of the catastrophe which has befallen the Reich and the loss incurred by the world at large...

...Shortly before Stresemann's death Dr...

...The People's party, he advised his hearers, promised its collaboration in the enactment of the law...

...For his country's former enemies to accept Stresemann's professions as the opinion of the majority of his countrymen was quite another matter, especially in view of the relentless persecution to which Stresemann was subjected for his alleged desertion of a sacred cause...

...His death, the same paper proclaimed, had come at the right time inasmuch as his policy of conciliation was alrady strongly on the decline...

...It is the consideration of this hostility and the opposition which brings us to the realization of the third great obstacle in Stresemann's striving for the rehabilitation of his country, i.e., a not illegitimate doubt on the part of the outside world as to the degree to which Stresemann's changed point of view could be taken to represent German public opinion at large...

...There is therefore little wonder that Poincare felt justified in questioning the German government's motives in its offer for the abandonment of passive resistance as a quid pro quo for the opening of negotiations for the evacuation of the Ruhr...

...The future must be allowed to answer these questions...

...To the extent to which this courage and steadfastness were effective in wringing affirmative votes from abusive lips, or in drowning the cries of the opposition in the volume of ayes, to that extent did he convince the world that at least a goodly majority of his countrymen had come to think in matters of international portent much as he did...

...But ever mindful of the limitation Imposed by public opinion abroad as well as at home, he had the good sense to accept with grace what he could get...

...No one appreciated this more than Stresemann himself, and it was this appreciation which enabled him to bear the weight of their assaults as long and as patiently as he did...

...But he concluded that this attitude toward the present "should not prevent our honoring the past...

...At Berlin and Leipzig he studied political science and economics...

...In order to enforce generally the national ordinance required to secure popular acquiescence in the abandonment of passive resistance in the Ruhr region, the national government was finally compelled to send its troops into Communist Saxony and to threaten similar action against Nationalist Bavaria...

...In 1907 he entered politics...

...That the social and political self-respect of the people in that region was endangered by prolonged idleness, ordered by the national government and maintained by lavish doles of phantom money, that the very soul of the unfortunate population was being poisoned by the attempt of many to evade non-prohibited employment and to secure such doles by deceit and lying, was none of their concern...

...Being business-minded he was by calling or nature constructive...

...A democratic monarchy might appeal to him as a future ideal, service to the republic was his business now...

...Curtius, appointed by him to the office vacated by Streseman's death, he has wisely chosen not only an intimate friend and political follower of the deceased, but a man after Stresemann's own heart...

...We must show understanding for a government which is powerless in the face of the demands of foreign enemies, even though we may differ as to the ways which are to lead to the goal...

...In fact, Von Rheinbaben's biographical sketch goes a long way toward elucidating this proof...

...But after all, the true test of a man's greatness is found not so much in the measurement of his achievements as in the comprehension of the obstacles looming on the road to success...

...But what will be the effect of the removal of this man from the conduct of the Reich's foreign affairs upon the course of international conciliation...

...As a friend of business he was in favor of submarine warfare as the only means to victory, and with it to the territorial, industrial and commercial expansion coveted by many of the industrialists among his political friends...

...It is well known that, even in his own party, the right wing under the influence of leaders like Dr...

...Will his political enemies at home succeed in reviving the old distrust of Germany's former foes abroad...

...General von Lossow, national commander of the Bavarian division of the Reichswehr, made common cause with the Nationalist rebellion as a protest against Stresemann's conduct of the Reich's foreign policy...

...To the pessimist, Stresemann's death in the hour of his country's and the world's greatest need for good-will and square dealing may appear as the brutal stroke of an ironic fate...

...Nor has the representative of a nation defeated and crushed as Germany was, ever been more successful in gaining, in so short a period, the confidence and cooperation of its former enemies in his never-tiring struggle for the fulfilment of these needs...

...In justice to the elements opposed to Stresemann's policy of fulfilment it should be stated that, at least as far as the extreme Nationalists are concerned, their attitude has its raison d'etre not in a personal hatred of Stresemann and his point of view, but in their bitterness over the territorial and economic losses inflicted by the terms of peace...

...This was the Stresemann who faced the collapse of November, 1918, and the anticipation of what the coming peace was sure not to bring...

...But whatever the innermost motives for his change of front were, during the five years from 1918 to 1923 Stresemann came to realize that, though loyalty to the memory of old ideals was a sine qua non for the salvation of his self-respect, such loyalty could not be allowed to stand in the way of the more imperious present claims of Reich and people to the unconditional support of the republic as the existing, and for a time at least the only possible, form of government...

...In the person of Dr...

...The son of a humble restaurant keeper in Berlin, Stresemann owed his higher education to his early evidence of intellectual gifts and to his father's willingness to make every sacrifice to give his son a university education...

...Not since the days of Bismarck has Germany had the good fortune to possess a statesman gifted as Stresemann was to envisage the true needs of his country...

...With courage and determination he has taken steps to prevent the possibility of a crisis at home and of the resurgence of the old suspicions and fears abroad...

...There is no doubt that the chief opponent of the Stresemann of 1923 and after was the Stresemann of 1918 and before...

...But Scholz was speaking for those industrialists of the right wing who are openly hostile to Stresemann and his policy of fulfilment...

...Having received the Doctor's degree he became assistant to the general secretary of the Association of German Chocolate Manufacturers and two years later general secretary of the League of Saxon Industrialists...

...Convinced of the justice of his country's claims he never hesitated to ask for all he considered within the realm of reason...

...After the assassination of Foreign Minister Rathenau, the national government enacted the Law for the Protection of the Republic...

...When Stresemann undertook the burden of government in 1923, both groups favored the continuation of passive resistance in the Ruhr district with the hope of profitable fishing in troubled waters...

...But his practical support of the republic and his advocacy of the policy of fulfilment brought him face to face with the second obstacle of his career as Chancellor and Foreign Minister, namely, violent opposition from the ranks of his friends as well as open revolt from the Communist left and the extreme Nationalist right...

...That this attitude of hostility has not changed was shown at the time of Stresemann's death...

...Many a picture could I point out to you of that quiet, steady, heroic man standing surrounded by enmity, not only abroad but at home, determined to play a perfectly straight game, determined to carry into practice the proverb that he who does not respect himself is respected by nobody else...

...Scholz delivered one of his famous opposition speeches, in which he declared the Hague agreements and the burdens assumed under the Young plan unacceptable...

...As to himself and the opinion held of him by the outside world at the untimely end of his career, no greater tribute could be paid to Stresemann the man and statesman than that contained in the simple and touching words of Ramsay MacDonald: Many a story I could tell you...

...Immediately upon the realization of the fiasco of the old order, he set about to establish and assume the leadership of the Volks-partei as the successor of the National Liberal party...

...A devoted follower of Bassermann, the party's leader and chairman, Stresemann succeeded to the chairmanship at Bassermann's death in 1917...

...From the Communists and the extreme Nationalists of the Hitler and Ludendorff type nothing better could be expected...

...As speaker of the People's party, Stresemann, addressing the Reichstag, proclaimed the right of protection for the republican constitution and its representative organs...

...But Stresemann was too much of a realist not to distinguish between hope and fact...

...It is unjust to hold those who are today the bearers of the state's powers . . . responsible for our misery...

...The time will come when we shall be able to understand the more intimate motives and the successive steps in the course of his amazing conversion, as manifested in his political activity since 1918...

...Scholz not only failed to approve Stresemann's policy of conciliation, but placed all possible difficulties in his way...

...The optimist may see in it a providential sacrifice destined to bring to a sense of their responsibility the recalcitrant at home and abroad...

...Facts such as these establish Gustav Stresemann as a statesman of first rank...

...It held that the assassination of Dr...

...The business-minded Stresemann having turned politician, it was precisely this quality which made of him the statesman he proved to be...

...For Stresemann to submerge his sorrow over the disappearance of the glorious past in his effort to secure for his people a tolerable present and a more promising future was one thing...

...Rathenau was not the result of factional conditions, but rather of the total demoralization of German political life...

...It is true that, during the election for the second Reichstag, Stresemann and his friends of the People's party went to the polls on a platform favoring a democratic monarchy rather than the republic...

...But whether we dote on blind fate or believe in a wise providence, we can all agree that Germany and the world have reason to be grateful for the fact that in the venerable Hindenburg the Reich possesses a President who, though cherishing a deep love for the past, is endowed with an equally profound sense of duty and devotion to the needs of the present...

...He rejected the implication that a monarchist could not or should not be an officer of the republic, reminding his audience that the first republican government had expressed its gratitude for the fact that the civil service officials of the old regime had placed themselves at the disposal of the new order...

...According to Associated Press despatches, the Communists failed to attend the Reichstag meeting in Stresemann's memory and the pan-German Deutsche Zeitung had the unspeakably bad taste to state that with Stresemann's death there was removed one of the Reich's greatest political dangers...

...As member and leader of the National Liberal party, Stresemann naturally was a staunch protagonist of the imperial regime and an ardent believer in the justice of Germany's claim to a place in the sun...

...But even so, there is no justification for astonishment that, except among the most intimate circle of friends, this apparent conversion was received with scepticism and derision...

...What finally brought to his country's former enemies the conviction of his and his government's sincerity was the superhuman courage and stoicism with which Stresemann stood up under the lashings inflicted upon him by so many of his own compatriots for the very acts which, in the end, won for him the respect and affection of the outside world, and for his country a progressive lightening of the burden of the treaty of peace...

...No one could be expected to have a clearer vision than Stresemann to see, nor greater courage to admit, that the most imperative demand of the moment was stoical acceptance of the inevitable and the manifestation of the utmost good faith in the fulfilment of the engagements of that peace, accepted under force though they were...

...In this connection he said: The fight about the past must cease...

...Not that Stresemann deceived himself in believing that he always secured what he had sought to obtain...

...Will their Quixotic demand of a plebiscite for the rejection of the Young plan succeed in destroying all that Stresemann has accomplished...

...No one could be more deeply shocked at the annihilating terms of the treaty of peace than Stresemann holding to the views expressed above, and no one could be more anxious to secure what relief from these terms was possible...

...Their grudge is primarily one of injured pride and resentment over financial burdens...

...With his associations it was natural that he should affiliate with the National Liberal party, the political fold of big business, and that he should go to the Reichstag as the party's candidate...

...For those outside the circle of intimates could not but remember the Stresemann of 1918 and before, and they could not but point to the paradox of the past and present...

...And yet, what was patently Stresemann's weakness at home eventually proved a source of strength abroad...

...Among the left wing of the People's party this attack was regretted as a stab in the back of Stresemann, the Reich's Foreign Minister directly responsible for the commitments thus attacked...

...Having thus through his courage and moderation established trust in his own and his government's integrity of purpose, there began for Stresemann that series of materially modest but potentially phenomenal successes: the Dawes plan, evacuation of the Ruhr, membership in the League and in the League's Council, Locarno, the Young plan, evacuation of the Rhineland by the middle of 1930, negotiations for the return of the Saar valley, and above all, a place of renewed respect for his country's opinion in the consideration of problems of international concern...