Momentous Transition

INTERNATIONAL

Momentous Transition

For seven long years some 200 Allied officers have been living well at Germany's expense, each with his own automobile and his German chauffeur. Endlessly they have patrolled up and down Germany, inspecting this garrison, that fort, this ship, that dye factory, to see that armament was not being amassed contrary to the Treaty of Versailles. While the so potent officers have been motoring up and down the land, their headquarters, the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission at Berlin, has hummed with the click of typewriters, and reverberated to the tread of generals. All this has cost Germans a pretty penny-- $15,000,000 in money and much in wounded pride. It was swept away last week. And one of the Allied officers, an Italian, who could not bear to give up the dignity and consequence he had enjoyed for seven years, committed suicide. . . .

Commission Rests. The finale came last week when Marshal Foch, President of the Commission, announced at Paris that Germany has fully complied with her obligations to disarm under the Treaty of Versailles.

That is not true. Marshal Foch of all men best knows it is not true. But the Allies have come to realize that Germany, a great republic, cannot be forever fettered down to the letter of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany has disarmed to an extent sufficient to render France safe from aggression. Then why not accept the practical minimum of German armament now achieved, and forget that the Versailles Treaty calls for virtually total disarmament?

That was what the Allies did last week. Marshal Foch gave Germany a clean bill of disarmament; and forthwith Article 213 of the Treaty automatically operated to transfer supervision of German armament from the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission to the Council of the League of Nations.

Henceforth, although Germany is still bound to disarmament by the Versailles Treaty, she will not be under the harsh supervision of Allied officers. Instead League civilians will function, if and when any League-member-state shall enter a protest with the League that Germany is arming again.