Fighting for Fatherland

Seven columns wide the mammoth headline WILL GERMANY GO BANKRUPT stared London in the face one day last week. It spread across the entire front page of the MacDonald Government's party organ the Daily Herald. Paradoxically this super-scarehead was a friendly gesture. Silver-haired, silver-tongued Scot MacDonald was welcoming that day the first German Chancellor to set foot in England since the War: Dr. Heinrich Bruening, a young clean shaven statesman of but 46, a Catholic of stern fiber who won the Iron Cross fighting fuer Kaiser und fuer Vaterland.

Dr. Bruening came to London last week for the express purpose of persuading World public opinion that Germany faces bankruptcy and revolution unless her Reparations burden is reduced. Mr. MacDonald seemed ready to help--the British attitude being that such reduction is entirely up to the U. S. Under the friendly headline WILL GERMANY GO BANKRUPT Scot MacDonald's hospitable Herald said:

"The possibilities of American co-operation in a joint revision of Reparations and War debts must be sounded. . . . Dare the United States face even the possibility of Germany suspending all payments? Dare the American banks and Government face the wrath of hundreds of thousands of small American investors who were persuaded to take up German securities? Wouldn't the United States, rather than face this, cooperate in an attempt to save the situation?"

Germans en Route. Young Chancellor Bruening took with him to London his slightly older Foreign Minister, Dr. Julius Curtius, 54, a by no means brilliant successor to the late, great Dr. Gustav Stresemann.

Dr. Curtius thoroughly bungled the Austro-German attempt to form a customs union (TIME, March 30 et seq.). Dr. Curtius has yet to win a major diplomatic victory. He is a family man, devoted to his small children. Whenever he returns to Berlin from an official mission the crust of his formal reception at the railway station is punctured by their loud whoops. Studious and a hard, clear thinker, Husband Curtius has much that a Foreign Minister should have--has no genius.

With Bachelor Bruening, Husband Curtius entered a sleeping car at Berlin. Both statesmen pulled down their blinds. Both went to sleep. Whenever the train halted on its way to Hamburg crowds gathered to cheer the German Delegation, but the blinds of Drs. Bruening & Curtius remained drawn. They gave no sign of life whatsoever en route.

Arrived at Hamburg, the German Delegation went aboard the Hamburg-American liner Hamburg. Drs. Bruening & Curtius at once went up on the bridge. Playfully an officer took Chancellor Bruening by the arm, saying: "It is a rule of the Hamburg-American Line that all passengers must sleep in their berths from two to four in the afternoon." From two to four Bachelor Bruening slept in his berth. Husband Curtius said he would sleep in a deck chair, cheated, was caught reading Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Arrived off the Isle of Wight, the Hamburg transhipped the German Delegation onto the British destroyer Winchester which brought them with all honor to Southampton--honor particularly precious to a war-defeated nation.

Monastic Spartan. George & Mrs. Bernard Shaw were late for the luncheon party of 19 which Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald gave to welcome Drs. Bruening & Curtius to "Chequers," the British summer White House. Mrs. Shaw appeared mortified, George, breezy and brazen as usual. By arriving late in a car which he drove himself, the red-whiskered Irishman kept waiting not only the Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers of two Great Powers but also Governor Montagu Norman of the Bank of England and the personal representative of George V at the Chequers Conference, His Majesty's private secretary Sir Clive Wigram. Hostess No. 1 was famed Miss Ishbel MacDonald, charity worker. Hostess No. 2 was obscure Miss Sheila MacDonald, bicycle rider, basketballer. Lunch was the merriest Dr. Bruning has eaten in a long time. As a friend of his once said: "Heinrich is more than Spartan, he is monastic!"

Three years ago the obscure name of Heinrich Bruening was not in Germany's Who's Who. He was born in 1885 at Munster in Westphalia, son of a distiller who knew for certain the names of his prosperous ancestors as far back as the 16th Century.

Heinrich had a brother who became a priest, lived much of his life in America, died in New York City in 1924. Heinrich, after winning degrees at the Universities of Strasbourg, Munich and Bonn, traveled widely and intensively in Europe, visited his brother in America, went home and looked about for a Catholic duty to per form.

"Wilhelm II ruled by divine right," quipped a Berlin humorist recently, "but Chancellor Bruening rules as a divine duty."

Zentrum to Chancellor. His first duty, young Dr. Bruening felt, was to strive as an underling of the Catholic Zentrum Party in Westphalia -- his chief and successful effort being to organize Catholic Zentrum trade unions. Came the War and sterner duties. Bespectacled Dr. Bruening became, in an amazingly short time, be spectacled Captain Bruening, commander of a crack Prussian machine gun unit. In action he won the Iron Cross, both second and first class, returned to Westphalia wounded, hard.

In the crazy post-War years of inflation, Dr. Bruening moved with the Catholic Centre from staunch Imperialism to staunch Republicanism. Six years ago his party put him into the Reichstag. There his sheer erudition made him valuable to politicians who needed to ask questions before talking about budgets and such.

Quietly, modestly, but authoritatively and rapidly Dr. Bruening forged upward to Party Leadership which he assumed in 1929. He was and is close to Dr. Gottfried Treviranus, "Hindenburg's Colonel House." It was as the potent old President's protege that Dr. Bruening became German Chancellor (TIME, April 7, 1930) before he was known to Who's Who. In amazement people all over Germany asked each other, "Who is our new Chancellor?"

Bruening's Mistake. Young Chancellor Bruening showed a prompt distaste for "tightrope walking," the maneuver by which a German Chancellor keeps his Cabinet balanced on the shifting support of half a dozen quarreling coalition parties. Boldly, rashly Dr. Bruening dissolved the Reichstag, hoping to win a stronger position in the ensuing election. This hope was utterly mistaken. Adolf Hitler won a sudden, unexpected 6,000,000 votes for his Fascist Party (TIME. Sept. 22). The fall of Chancellor Bruening's Cabinet would have followed--except that a majority of Reichstag Deputies were scared out of their wits! They dared not let Catholic Bruening fall for fear of Fascist Hitler.

To triumph on such ashes of defeat takes an Iron Chancellor. This Dr. Bruening is. Aided by equally resolute President von Hindenburg, he has managed to rule Germany for the past eleven months as a semi-dictator, forcing the Reichstag into dissolution and ruling by Presidential decree. Thus the 18 other luncheon guests at Chequers saw last week a great man whose big mistake has proved to be his big chance. The question (in minds less frivolous than Mr. Shaw's) was last week whether Chancellor Bruening was then and there making his second big mistake, and if so whether he can make it a second triumph.

"Unbearable Reparations," The daring stroke, the possible mistake of Chancellor Bruuening he made in Germany while he was in England! This paradox is not impossible. Dr. Bruening left with President von Hindenburg for promulgation after he reached England: first a high pressure manifesto signed by every member of the Bruening Cabinet; second a drastic decree clapping new fiscal burdens on the German people in order to balance the budget.

The manifesto spoke of the decree as "putting forth the last power and reserves of the nation," declared that this act "entitles the German Government and makes it its duty towards the German people to tell the world: the limits of the privations we have imposed on our people have been reached. . . . The direly-menaced business and financial position of the Reich calls imperatively for alleviation from the unbearable reparations obligations. . . ."

Privations imposed on Germans last week by the decree were: 1) upping of the Fatherland's income tax, even in the low bracket of Germans earning only $75 per month; 2) slashes in the salaries of Germany's enormous class of petty public officials; 3) upping of the tobacco, sugar and gasoline taxes; 4) drastic cuts in the benefits paid to Germany's army of unemployed, now totaling 4,000,000.

Midnight Talk. By his iron decree, by his polemical manifesto. Dr. Bruening created a world sensation well calculated to conceal the fact that he and Mr. MacDonald did and could do precious little at Chequers.

George & Mrs. Bernard Shaw were cleared away with the lunch. Arm in arm, Chancellor and Prime Minister strolled in the Garden. On the porch Dr. Curtius sat and sat with British Foreign Minister "Uncle Arthur" Henderson (the rock-ribbed son of Glasgow to whom Pacifist MacDonald turned over leadership of the Labor Party during the War).

Mr. Henderson has been elected Chairman of next year's League Disarmament Conference (TIME, June 1). He and Dr. Curtius talked about that. Laborite A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the British Admiralty, also talked with the representatives of disarmed Germany about disarming other countries--an academic discussion. The BIG TALK at Chequers, secret, lasted until well past midnight--with a strange result.

The British seemingly feared that, in expressing sympathy for Germany and hope that the U. S. will agree to scale clown Reparations, they had played a trifle too far into Dr. Bruening's hands. Emotional, sympathetic Host MacDonald had to ask his guest please not to give an interview when he got back to his London hotel. Dr. Bruening promised, kept his promise, gave a subdued interview later "on German soil" at the German Embassy. In a joint MacDonald-Bruening communique the statesmen promised each other respecting Reparations "close collaboration with other governments concerned."

Buckingham to Berlin, As a final British gesture, George V received the Germans at Buckingham Palace. From there "Iron Cross" Bruening set out for home to face German music, loud music, menacing music, stirred by his decree. In Berlin Communists had staged "hunger riots" against "Bruening the Hunger Dictator." Roaring defiance, these rioters broke windows, seized "hunger loot" and ran. . . .

Exactly opposite was the conduct of 1,400 Rhine & Ruhr industrialists meeting at Duesseldorf. appalled by the new income and other taxes they will have to pay. Their idea: As a quasi-dictator Dr. Bruning must be harder on rich men than he would need to be as an out-and-out Mussolini. Acting on this idea the 1,400 rich men voted a resolution urging Dr. Bruning to tear off the mask, proclaim himself what he almost is: Dictator!

One year ago Dr. Bruening said: "After the passage of the Young Plan, Germans thought there would be a decrease of taxation and better times. . . . Imagine their disgust, then, to find themselves confronted with the possibility of increased taxes!" This possibility Chancellor Bruening has made an actuality, raising taxes again and again, raising them a fourth time last week. Knowing the extreme depth of German disgust, advertising it to the world. Heinrich Bruening must have anxiously asked himself as he returned to Berlin: "Is it my Catholic duty to proclaim myself Dictator?"

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