Germany's Repudiation Whatever States in Europe may be aspiring to
the role of what President Roosevelt calls " the good neighbour," Germany certainly is not one of them. Her conduct makes her consistently impossible to live with as one can live with, say, France or Holland or Czechoslovakia or Turkey. The denunciation of the " international river " clauses of the Treaty • of Versailles is a small thing in itself. The clauses Were always open to objection and the time for their revision or abrogation had fully come. In fact revision was actually under discussion, and in the case of the Rhine and the Elbe agreement had been reached with Germany. After sending troops into the Rhineland last March in contra- vention of the Treaty of Versailles (and in contravention of the voluntarily contracted Treaty of Locarno, and of his spontaneous declaration of May, 1985, that he would honour the Treaty of Locarno in this particular respect) Herr Hitler made a speech in which he declared that " I can regard the struggle for German equality as concluded today." Little more than eight months later the international river clauses are repudiated on the ground that they perpetuate an inequality. The actual situation as regards river navigation has not been greatly affected, for Germany has guaranteed full rights to any State which grants her reciprocity, but in face of repeated demonstrations of Herr Hitler's readiness to repudiate his . own undertakings, the value of the guarantee must be regarded as problematic.
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