Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1926. PARTISANS OF THE OLD ORDER

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 54, 1 September 1926, Page 8

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1926. PARTISANS OF THE OLD ORDER

Oennany seemed to have chosen tho

better part when she elected to have nothing to dp with the sordid intrigues that should reach their climax at C4en-

ova next week, to leave to Britain and Franco tho responsibility of dealing as

best they may with the claims of Spain, Poland, ami any other aspirants who may spring a surprise at the eleventh hour, and, instead of being kept waiting on the doormat of the League as she was in March, to come to Geneva only when the course is clear and the other parties to the Locarno Treaties are ready to complete their contracts. But the Germans arc not all of a piece any more than any other nation, and some of.them are doing their best to make trouble at the very moment when their Government recognises that, for the present at any rate, in quietness and confidence lies the nation's strength. "More German tactlessness" is tho natural comment provoked by one's first impression, but it will not stand examination. Those who organised the groat military parade on Sunday could see as clearly as the German Government itself that such a demonstration at such a time could only prejudice tho negotiations' pending at Geneva, and it was just on that account that they thought it timely. The Nationalist Die-hards are out not for reconciliation but for revenge; not for peuce but for war. Locarno and Geneva are as littlo to their lilting as Versailles itsolf. Even Soviet Russia is in

their eyes a better friend and ally for the Fatherland than France or Britain, and they would welcome a repetition of the March fiasco as brightening tho prospect of an alliance which might enable Germany to get even with her conquerors. Royalists and Communists constitute the strange . combination which, with hopes based on a War of Revenge and a War of Eevolution respectively, desires to see Germany stay out of tho League. '' It is, however, hardly necessary to say that the Nationalists' Bed Left Wing was not represented in Sunday's rally. In a patriotic demonstration of any .kind the Communists would have been entirely out of place, and the only warlike, demonstration that they could possibly touch except, to break it up would be one designed to promote tho class war. But the. Nationalists have done very well on their own account. Both in 'numbers and in enthusiasm their demonstration is said to have far exceeded that which the Republicans held in July. The association with the memory of the dead and with, "the battles of Sedan, Tannenburg, and Jutland and the loss of the

German colonies" gave the promoters an immense initial advantage. It is true that tho glories of Sedan are more than 50 years old, that, though the German Navy survived the Battle of Jutland, it never took the sea again except to surrender en masse, and that the German colonies have been wiped off tho map. But the collapse of the French Empire at Sedan in 1870 makes a more cheerful subject for German patriots to contemplate than the collapse of their own Empire forty-eight years later, and the memory of their lost colonies is recalled-not for glory but for revenge. The moral of the Nationalists' rally is, as one of their organs says:— AYe deliberately reject the cry of "No Moro War," and devote ourselves to tho fight for Freedom and j Fatherland. Though in one of our messages "a monster rally of German Nationalists throughout the country" is spoken of, the fact that the memorial services which served as a pr-eludo were held in the churches of Nuremburg and tho reference in another * message to the "great demonstration in Nuremburg" suggest that this Bavarian city was the strategic centre, and probably tho sole seat, of a rally which was nationwide only in a representative sense. We hear nothing of meetings in Berlin or any other city, and even Prince Oscar of Prussia took his place with Prince Kupprecht of Bavaria and Marshal yon Mackenscn in tho great performance at Nuremburg. Before the War, Prussia, as tho State of tho Kaiser, the capital and the General Staff, was accus-

tomcd to sound the highest note of German truculonoc, but, since the Kaiser deserted Potsdam for Doom, Bavaria seems to have taken the load. Not Berlin but Munich- was the scene of the famous "Brewery .Rebellion," and it was at Munich that the strange trial followed in which Ludondorff, who was formally the principal culprit, received the homage both of the prosecution and of a strictly impartial Bench, as well as of the crowd. Tho apotheosis with which he was honoured on that occasion makes it all the more deplorable that the hero —or one of the heroes —of [ Tannenburg was not present at Nur-

emburg on Sunday to take the salute of the 20,000 goose-stoppers who inarched past tho othor Held-Marshals and the "galaxy of Princes, Princesses, and heroes of the War." Of a population of 00,000,000, twenty thousand may be but a very small fraction, but they represented millions who were not present.' Even more clearly than this groat parade tho fact that the Nationalist Party has forbidden its representative, Herr Hoetzseh, to join the German, delegation to Geneva shows that the partisans of the.old order have still to be reckoned with.