The German Chancellor's ease is simpler. " The question," he
observes with effective terseness, " is the fulfilment of the disarmament promise of the other Powers," and he states categorically, as he has stated repeatedly before, that there is no question of German re. armament. ". We do not," he affirms, " demand special rights for ourselves, but merely the same treatment as all other States." Is it still impossible to build any bridge between the Quai d'Orsay and the Wilhelmstrasse ? Quite impossible, certainly,. if M. Herriot has. forgotten all about LOcarno. •• What .better security can France ask for than the guarantee of her frontiers by Great Britain and Italy ? The alswer, no doubt, is that Fi'ance wants. -a guarantee against being involved iii war bV.. goine'trouble on Germany's eastern 'frontier: Herr von Papen might well think about that. The suspicion is rife in France, and existent elsewhere, that Gertnany's -policy is to force the revision of the Treaty Of --Versailles -point by point—first reparations, then: armanietatsi then fronticr.and•flhatir,-pertut2s; colohies: Some undertaking that would pledge President Hinden- burg and Herr von Papen, as decisively as Dr. Stresemann was pledged, to seek no rectification of the eastern frontiers by war would make the path of a French Prime Minister genuinely seeking disarmament far easier. But with such an undertaking or without it the question France has perpetually on her lips will have to be answered, and by our Government as well as others. Do we accept the League Covenant with reservations, or in its full implications ? *
