Vossische Zeitung
- The liberation of the Rhineland — Negotiations in Geneva
- Politicians instead of generals!
- The crisis in German wholesale trade
The Geneva correspondent disputes rumours about foreign-minister talks and argues that Rhineland occupation policy should move from military hands to political responsibility. In a separate essay, a wholesale-trade association official warns that bankruptcies alone understate the sector’s distress because quiet liquidations and firms without assets disappear from the formal count. Both pieces make arguments, rather than simply reporting completed government decisions.
Two selected sections of the Rhineland article and the opening of the separate wholesale-trade essay. Later disarmament arguments and the rest of the trade analysis are not fully translated.
Translation
The liberation of the Rhineland
Negotiations in Geneva.
bhd GENEVA, September 13.—All manner of reports have been published about the conversations between the German Foreign Minister and his British and French colleagues which do not correspond to the facts.
This is hardly surprising. Where journalists from all over the world gather to discuss the day’s events, “suppositions” arise which easily become “certainties” when they pass from a third mouth into a third ear. In fact, the three foreign ministers themselves have so far said nothing about their conversations. Nor is it true that Briand and Stresemann met secretly in Chamonix yesterday, Sunday. The French Foreign Minister was at a dinner with the Romanians in Geneva, while the German Foreign Minister was in Chamonix, enjoying conversation with some members of the delegation and personal friends, in which politics played no part at all.
Politicians instead of generals!
Germany cannot, of course, wait until the League of Nations has solved the disarmament question. But it can certainly pursue a generous policy on this point, allowing the French some time on condition that the occupation is reorganized now: supreme authority over its administration must be taken out of the generals’ hands and placed in those of politically responsible figures. The occupation question is, after all, not a military question; it is a political question to a very high degree.
The crisis in German wholesale trade
By Dr Engel, managing director of the Central Association of German Wholesale Trade, Berlin.
The Central Association of German Wholesale Trade meets today in Düsseldorf for its annual conference.
The depression in which German wholesale trade still finds itself has demanded strenuous, laborious work from wholesalers, yet has scarcely yielded a return and has instead imposed hardship on many firms. Great gaps have been torn in their ranks. The path wholesale trade has had to follow has been a road of suffering, lined with the gravestones of economic collapse. Yet it is not only the number of bankruptcies and firms under court supervision that gives a characteristic picture of the situation. We must also consider the many lying in the economic graveyard of the nameless, for whom bankruptcy proceedings were never opened because there were insufficient assets. And we must not forget those firms which quietly liquidated and died as a noble wild animal dies, silently and without complaint, retreating to the deepest part of the forest to lie down and die.
Context
Geneva brought negotiations and expectations into close proximity
The League’s annual Assembly assembled governments and journalists in one city. Meetings outside its formal sessions could therefore become important news, particularly when German, French and British ministers discussed relations after the war. The Rhineland title gives these reports their stakes: German readers hoped diplomacy would change the occupation. The correspondent’s account shows an international conference functioning as both a negotiating setting and a place where expectations quickly circulated.
Political responsibility was the proposed bridge to ending occupation
The argument offers a way to act before a complete disarmament settlement: change who directs the occupation. Putting politically responsible figures in charge would, in the writer’s reasoning, turn its administration into a matter open to diplomatic negotiation and public accountability. The proposal linked a concession of time to France with an immediate change for the occupied territory. It was a concrete attempt to reconcile German demands with the slower pace of multilateral negotiations.
Business closures could exceed the official bankruptcy count
Engel describes several ways a firm could disappear. Some entered bankruptcy or court supervision, some lacked the assets needed for proceedings, and others wound up quietly. The distinction matters for understanding the economic distress wholesalers were presenting at their annual meeting: legal case totals did not capture all losses of firms and livelihoods. His extended graveyard imagery gives collective expression to experiences that might otherwise remain isolated and unrecorded.
Original
Die Befreiung der Rheinlande — Verhandlungen in Genf
Die Befreiung der Rheinlande
Verhandlungen in Genf
bhd Genf, 13. September
Ueber die Unterredungen zwischen dem deutschen Außenminister und seinen englischen und französischen Kollegen ist alles Mögliche veröffentlicht worden, was den Tatsachen nicht entspricht.
Das ist kein Wunder; denn wo sich Journalisten aus aller Welt zusammenfinden und die Ereignisse des Tages besprechen, da ergeben sich „Vermutungen“, die leicht zu „Gewißheiten“ werden, wenn sie vom dritten Munde in das dritte Ohr gelangen. Tatsächlich haben die drei Außenminister selbst über ihre Unterredungen bisher kein Wort verlauten lassen. Es ist auch nicht wahr, daß am gestrigen Sonntag eine heimliche Zusammenkunft zwischen Briand und Stresemann in Chamonix stattgefunden hat. Der französische Außenminister war in Genf bei einem Diner mit den Rumänen zusammen, und der deutsche Außenminister hat sich in Chamonix mit einigen Mitgliedern der Delegation und einigen persönlichen Freunden in gemütlicher Unterhaltung befunden, in der die Politik überhaupt keine Rolle gespielt hat.
Politiker statt Generale!
Politiker statt Generale!
Natürlich kann Deutschland nicht warten, bis die Abrüstungsfrage vom Völkerbunde gelöst ist, aber es kann sehr wohl in diesem Punkte eine großzügige Politik treiben, die den Franzosen etwas Zeit läßt unter der Bedingung, daß die Besatzung schon jetzt anders geregelt wird, daß die oberste Entscheidung über die Handhabung der Besatzung aus den Händen der Generale genommen und in die Hände von politisch verantwortlichen Persönlichkeiten gelegt wird. Die Besatzungsfrage ist eben keine militärische, sie ist eine in hohem Maße politische Frage.
Die Krisis im deutschen Großhandel
Die Krisis im deutschen Großhandel
Von Dr. Engel, Geschäftsführer im Zentralverband des Deutschen Großhandels, Berlin
In Düsseldorf tritt heute der Zentralverband des Deutschen Großhandels zu seiner diesjährigen Tagung zusammen.
Die Depression, in der sich der Deutsche Großhandel heute noch befindet, hat angestrengte mühselige Arbeit von den Großhandelsbetrieben verlangt und doch kaum eine Rente zugelassen, sondern den Betrieben vielfach Entbehrung auferlegt. Schwere Lücken sind in den Bestand des Großhandels gerissen. Der Weg, den der Großhandel gehen mußte, war ein Leidensweg, eingesäumt von Leichensteinen wirtschaftlicher Zusammenbrüche. Aber nicht nur die Zahl der Konkurse und Geschäftsaufsichten gibt ein charakteristisches Bild der Lage, sondern man muß auch die große Zahl jener berücksichtigen, die auf dem wirtschaftlichen Friedhof der Namenlosen liegen, über die aus Mangel an Masse kein Konkurs eröffnet worden ist, und man muß nicht zuletzt jener Betriebe gedenken, die still liquidiert haben und gestorben sind, so, wie ein edles Wild stirbt, das still und ohne zu klagen in die tiefste Stelle des Waldes geht und sich zum Sterben hinlegt.