The Sun FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1928 THE WATCH ON THE RHINE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 453, 7 September 1928, Page 8

The Sun FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1928 THE WATCH ON THE RHINE

\ THERE is so much excited interest in Northern Europe over the continued occupation of the Rhineland by Allied Forces that if two representative statesmen of France and Germany merely raise their hats ,to one another in passing, there is speculative talk about the prospect of immediate withdrawal of a great army of military policemen. Something of that sort is reported to-day from Geneva. M. Briand, the French Foreign Minister, met Dr. Mueller, the German Chancellor, in pleasant circumstances of friendship, and for 90 minutes they, like 'the Walrus and the Carpenter, “talked of many things.” Inevitably the topics included the vexed question of the Allied watch on the Rhine. And-now there is the usual clatter of conjecture about an early evacuation. It cannot be challenged successfully that there is much more reason to-day for evacuation of the Rhineland than for its occupation by over 50,000 Allied troops. _ The method of policing the Rhine is admittedly clumsy, expensive, provocative and humiliating to a nation that has been stripped of its former swaggering military power. Its utility is more or less illusory, since the danger it is supposed to avert is not so real as the danger it is likely to provoke. Germany makes no secret of the fact that the presence of a big army in a zone of her territory set apart for complete demilitarisation adds fuel to a smouldering fire and generates a heat of desire for revenge, some other day when conditions will be different.

Nobody has yet been able to discover why the peacemakers at Paris insisted on putting into tile Treaty of Versailles the clause which provides for an Allied military occupation of Rhineland for a period of 15 years. After the Franco-Prussian War, Germany, which was then anything but tender in the days of triumph, was satisfied with imposing on France an occupational term of five years, and actually demonstrated such a degree .of satisfaction as voluntarily to withdraw her army of occupation from France before the set period was exhausted. If there is to be any faith reposed in the glorious professions of international love and honest desire for peace in Europe, to say nothing at' all about the larger dream of freedom from war everywhere for ever, neither France nor Great Britain can j’ustify the Allied occupation of Rhineland until the year 1935. One of the reasons for maintaining so larg'e an army of occupation in Rhineland is the indisputable fact that before the world war Germ any kept about 50,000 soldiers in the same region. That display of prepared military force was a strutting menace all the time it existed, and subsequently proved to be an active force of military madness. But surely the-conditions are not in any sense the same to-day. There is no spirit of aggression behind the display of Allied military power in Rhineland. Thus the continuance of the impressive demonstration can have no effect other than to provoke Germany and rebuild and rekindle the smashed furnace of German hatred.

Of course, it is easier to understand the French point of view than it is to support it. As France sees things, Germany has never flagged in the practice of her policy to pull the Versailles Treaty to pieces. First this penalty is pulled off, and then another penalty, until it looks as though the whole Treaty will be torn to shreds. The only, logical answer to that logical argument is simply a quiet statement that it is better to revise a hard treaty in peace than to secure its revision by wax'. The malady of victory can become as pernicious as the malady of defeat, and the obstinacy of France in refusing to abandon the Allied occupation of an ancient enemy is perilously near to being a disease of triumph. The constant presence of foreign soldiers on German 'soil mocks the great movement toward durable world peace. It is another anomaly and another contradiction in tactics.

AVOIDING WASTE

THE City Engineer last evening presented a report to the City Council on refuse collection and disposal, in which he mentioned that the burning capacity of the destructor was 80 tons a day, but that storage capacity was inadequate. He added that destructors would be necessary for the oixtlying portions of the city, xxnless disposal by tipping was to he continixed. The Sun has already had much to say about the evil habit of dumping refuse into a convenient gully, there to lie, a dillgurement to the landscape and a potential mexiace to health. It is good to note that someone in an official position is alive to the necessity of emerging from this “truly rural” state of affairs. Forty years ago the City of Glasgow, which boasts an extremely efficient administration, abolished the futile and insanitary practice of lifting refuse from one place and dumping it in another. Since then it has been found that from the contents of garbage-bins and the sweepings of the street can he produced power to di’ive machinery, fertilisers, chemicals, concrete and other valuable substances. Unsold material is used on municipally-owned farms yielding a good profit. One quarter of the cost of cleaning a great city is met by revenue from the sale of by-products issuing from the destructors. Auckland might profitably take a leaf from Glasgow’s book. There woxild fie no need to send a party of experts to study conditions on the spot. Mail services are reliable these days. The Auckland City Council has, or should have, leained by this time that procrastination does, not make for popularity, and if the City Engineer recommends additional destructors as a necessary work, the council should make arrangements accordingly for consulting. local bodies and setting a sxxitable scheme on foot. ‘ i