TOO POLITE TO HOSTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 348, 8 May 1928, Page 9

TOO POLITE TO HOSTS

AMERICAN AMBASSADOR IN GERMANY SPEECHES ANNOY FRENCH (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) Times Cable. ' LONDON, Saturday. The Berlin correspondent of “The Times’’ says the conferment of honorary degrees upon Herr Stresemann and Mr. Jacob G. Schurman, United States Ambassador to Germany, by the Heidelberg University, was marked by speeches demonstrating the solid feeling in America and Germany in favour of the American proposals for a pact to outlaw war. Mr. Schurman said war must be renounced if culture were to exist. He had been most impressed by the similarity of the international ideals of his own country and Germany. He hoped all the nations would join in the glorious march in the cause of civilisation. The correspondent says the speeches delivered have not encouraged the supporters of a Franco-American entente, nor Live they converted those who regard the proposed pact as idealistic. Herr Stresemann’s view that Bismarck was really a pacifist, who behaved with excessive moderation in imposing the treaty of 1870, has irritated Frenchmen. Mr. Schurman is considered to have gone too far in his effort to be polite to his hosts. His reference to the “glorious march 0 has provoked ironic citations of the sinking of the Lusitania and the invasion of Belgium.