New Cabinet

President von Hindenburg was generally credited in despatches last week with having quelled the strife among German party leaders sufficiently to allow Acting Chancellor Luther to resume the chancellorship at the head of a tolerably workable minority Government.

Just what the Herr President did or said appeared none too clear. Pressmen, who profess to see "an ironhanded statesman" in the aged Feldmarschall, reported that he summoned the leaders of the Centre parties to him and "commanded" them to settle their internal differences "within four hours" and forthwith to support Dr. Luther. Observers not seeking "copy," however, widely considered the "four-hour ultimatum" a piece of political stage business, designed to enhance the prestige of "the great German figurehead." They asserted that the following Cabinet, officially sworn in late in the week, represents merely the result of six weeks of inter-party dickering:

*/-Hans Luther ("Nonpartisan" ) Chancellor

*/-Gustave Stresemann (German People's Party) Foreign Minister

Wilhelm Kuelz (German Democratic Party) Interior

Peter Reinhold (German Democratic Party) Finance

* Otto Gessler ("Nonpartisan former Democrat") Defense

Julius Curtius (German People's Party) Economics

*Heinrich Brauns (Catholic Centrist Party) Labor /=/- Wilhelm Marx (Catholic Centrist Party) Justice

* Karl Stingl (Bavarian People's Party) Posts and Telegraphs * R. Krohne (German People's Party) Transportation

Unannounced Agriculture and Occupied Areas

The Significance. Observers noted that the present alignment of Centre parties behind Dr. Luther can command only 171 votes in the Reichstag out of a total of 493. Dr. Luther thus heads a "Little Coalition," with barely enough votes to outnumber the Left (Socialists, 131; Communists, 45) or the Right (German National People's Party, 103). In addition, some 43 votes appertaining to the numerous minor parties, and mostly leaning toward the Right, further serve to divide the Reichstag roughly into three loose factions of almost eq,ual power: "the Lefts," "Luther's Little Centre Coalition," and "the Rights."

That such an apparently hopeless three-cornered deadlock is considered "tolerably workable," arises from the fact that the Socialists have long followed the policy of "benevolent abstention from voting" which last December allowed the Luther-Stresemann minority Government to carry through the Locarno negotiations despite the opposition of the Right.

When the Locarno Pacts actually came up before the Reichstag, the Socialists momentarily ceased to abstain and helped Chancellor Luther to railroad the Pacts through. Their "price" for this aid was announced to have been Chancellor Luther's scrupulously fulfilled promise to resign, so that someone else might form a "Big Coalition" in which the Socialists would take part. Since no German statesman has been able to do this during the past six weeks, Dr. Luther is apparently to carry on and make the best of everybody's bad job.

Koch. Much interest centered upon a last minute fight, early in the week, between the German Democratic Party, which had got its leader, Herr Erich Koch, into Dr. Luther's "tentative Cabinet" (TIME, Jan. 25), and the Bavarian People's Party, which was intent on getting him out again. The Bavarians denounced Herr Koch as an "arch-unionist" who would take away the "sectional rights" appertaining to the various states of the German Republic. Eventually they forced him to allow another member of his party, Herr Kuelz, to receive the Interior portfolio, which Herr Koch had formerly demanded as his personal "plum" for supporting Dr. Luther. It was Herr Koch who failed in the most promising recent attempt at a "Big Coalition" (TIME, Dec. 28, 1925).

Developments. Despatches reported that the new Cabinet announced, after its first sitting, that Germany would accept the invitation of the League of Nations (TIME, Dec. 21, 1925, LEAGUE) to participate in the proposed League Disarmament Conference.

Simultaneously the leaders of the German National People's Party announced that they would redouble their efforts to postpone Germany's entrance into the League until the Allies should make further concessions.

Finally, a sensation was created when the notorious ultra-reactionary militarist, Captain Ehrhardt, was observed to be strolling about the lobbies of the Reichstag and conferring privately with the leaders of the Voelkische, the extreme-Right Ludendorff faction. Captain Ehrhardt not only led the famed Kapp Putsch, which attempted to overthrow the German Republic in March, 1920, but was so implicated in the assassination of the Ministers Erzberger and Rathenau that he was forced to flee from Germany until the passing of last year's amnesty law. Pressmen eagerly touted his appearance as a sign that his old adherents in Bavaria are planning to attempt a coup, aided by the Ludendorffers. It was generally admitted, however, that the possibility of such action is almost nil for the present

* Held identical rank in last Cabinet.

/-A former Chancellor.

/= The chief opponent of President von Hindenburg, at the last election.