Anniversary of "Guilt"

Last week passed the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. In those countries that won, little if any attention was paid to the day. In Germany there was mourning and rioting.

From President Paul Von Hindenburg and his cabinet came an official manifesto:

"Ten years have passed since the German peace emissaries at Versailles were forced to sign a document which was a bitter disappointment to all friends of justice and true peace. . . . Germany signed it without admitting that she was the sole author of the World War.

"This charge is not helpful to creating confidence among nations. We are confident that all Germany agrees with us in repudiating the war guilt charge and hopes with us for a future peace which will not be dictated by force but which will be based upon a unanimous conviction of free peoples having equal rights."

Everywhere in Germany flags were at half-mast. Newspapers were heavily bordered in black. Der Tag printed pictures of the lost cities of Danzig, Posen and Strasbourg festooned with chains.

The Steel Helmet Society and other monarchistic and militaristic organizations staged a pompous demonstration in the Berlin Stadium with much goose-stepping and waving of old Imperial flags. More spontaneous, more impressive was a student riot on Unter den Linden where 1,000 students sang Deutschland Uber Alles, shouted "Down with the Schweinische Republik," and attempted to serenade President von Hindenburg. The police, mindful of Bloody May Day (TIME, May 13), were careful not to shoot but wielded their heavy rubber clubs vigorously.

Along the borders of the Occupied Territory from Strasbourg in the south to the borders of Holland, watch fires were lighted as a protest against "German war guilt."

P: The New York World last week aptly summarized: "War guilt is primarily a political question: on it are supposed to depend the German obligation to pay reparations, the disarmament of Germany in a Europe which remains armed, the occupation of the Rhineland. and prohibition of the union of Germany and Austria, and the demarcation of the eastern frontiers. When these five questions have been finally settled. Article 231 will cease to have any political value, and the sentimental objection to it will prevail."

P: In Berlin's Vossische Zeitung Chancellor Hermann Miiller. who signed the Versailles Treaty, told for the first time his reminiscences of the ceremony, described how he and Johannes Bell, his colleague, signed the treaty with their own pens because they heard that the French wanted them to sign with pens from Alsace-Lorraine. Chancellor Mueller signed with his own old fountain pen, Delegate Bell with a wooden pen taken from his hotel bedroom.

"The moment I was alone I broke out into streams of perspiration," he wrote. "Then for the first time I realized that I had passed the most difficult hour of my life."