Ebert Forgiven

In Berlin, antic mechanicals of the Saddlers' Trade Union met and reinstalled Friedrich Ebert as a member of their fraternity. It mattered not to them that Germany's first President is long since dead (TIME, March 9, 1925). Still less were they mindful of his exceedingly pat remark: "It is as absurd to call me 'the Saddlemaker-President' as to call a great commander 'Sergeant-Fieldmarshal' because he once held the lower rank."

The mechanicals remembered only that they had cast out Herr Ebert from their union in 1919 for being too conservative, for having become known as "the Kaiser's Socialist." To them it seemed "only right, considering developments since 1919" that Friedrich Ebert should be able to boast celestially that he is a saddlemaker in good standing.