The foreign correspondent for Pathfinder Magazine filed this brief report about the goings-on in Germany on June 30, 1930, when the last Allied regiments had completed their occupation duties mandated under the Treaty of Versailles and withdrew to their own borders:
"For the most part the German population waited patiently until the last uniformed Frenchman had entrained and then they raised the German flags, [and] began to sing 'Deutschland Ueber Alles'..."
"President Hindenburg issued a proclamation saying in part:
'After long years of hardships and waiting, the demand of all Germans was today fulfilled. Loyalty to her fatherland, patient perseverance and common sacrifices have restored to the occupied territory the highest possession of every people - freedom.'" The attached article, written in 1928, reported on how heartily sick the Germans were at having to serve as hosts for three occupying armies as a result of a Versailles Treaty clause that mandated the Allied military occupation until 1935. The Foreign Minister of Germany, Dr Gustav Stresemann, made several eloquent pleas to the diplomatic community insisting that there was no need for the continuing encampments before he began submitting his bitter editorials to assorted European magazines, which are discussed herein: "Friendship between France and Germany is impossible as long as Allied troops remain in the occupation area of the Rhineland..."
One of the summer offerings of 1933 was the stage production of 'Peace Palace' by Emil Ludwig (1881 - 1948). Posted here is a review of the production along with a black and white photograph of the cast in full costume and recognizable make-up. In light of the overwhelming hostility toward Germans, whether they come to Paris to sign a peace treaty or for other reasons, the Parisian Gendarmes thought it best to enclose their hotel with palisade-style fencing, which they hoped would serve the dual purpose of keeping them in as much as it would serve to keep hostile natives out.
A photo of the barricade illustrates the article.
Attached is the 1922 book review of Robert Lansing's (1864 – 1928) book, Big Four, and Others of the Peace Conference . In this, Lansing's follow-up to his earlier book, The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative , the author
"shows us Clemenceau dominating the conference by sheer force of mind; Wilson outmaneuvered; Lloyd George clever, alert, but not very deep; and Orlando precise and lawyer like. This book confirms the popular belief that the general scheme of the treaty was worked out by the British and French delegations without material aid from the Americans. As a consequence, the American delegation lost prestige." A few choice words concerning the Treaty of Versailles by the German anti-socialist author S. Miles Bouton (born 1876):
"Such a treaty could not bring real peace to the world even if the conditions were less critical and complex. As they are, it will hasten and aggravate what the world will soon discover to be the most serious, vital, and revolutionary consequences of the war."
The quote above is an excerpt from THE NATION's review of Bouton's 1922 book, And The Kaiser Abdicates: The German Revolution, November, 1918.
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