GERMANY’s suggestion that Great Britain, Belgium, France, and Germany shall enter into a pact for the preservation of the European frontiers set up by the Treaty of Versailles is a most important move for European peace and security. It is a first and definite step towards a Franco-German understanding. It is the suggestion that the German Government is anxious to carry out its obligations for the disarmament to which it is pledged by the Treaty, and on which the withdrawal of the British troops in Cologne is contingent. It is a promise that there shall be no disturbance of the frontier between Germany and Poland, a question with which France is much concerned, and if the pact be signed it would be a pledge to the new nations that border Russia that they will be protected from Bolshevist invasion. We earnestly trust that the Allied Governments will give the proposal sympathetic consideration. The death of President Ebert is a serious matter for the German Republic. Its first President, essentially a man of the people, has performed his difficult duties with dignity and political understanding. We trust that Dr. Marx may be his successor. He has shown that he is a statesman without dangerous illusions. In the new German proposals we find reason to believe that Germany now realizes that it is impossible for a nation to live on dreams of revenge, and far wiser for it to win back a place in Europe by co-operation with the peoples against which she fought.
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