Neue Freie Presse
- How Do We Eliminate the Danger of New Wars?
- The Uzunović Government Remains in Office
- Fathers and Daughters
On 17 October 1926 the Neue Freie Presse printed an essay by Henry Ford, datelined New York, that opens with a prediction a leading munitions manufacturer had made in Ford's Dearborn office some five years earlier: the next war would be waged against the United States, led by Japan and Mexico, because of American commercial supremacy, its gold reserves and the money other nations owed it. A Belgrade telegram reported that the Yugoslav government crisis had been resolved late at night, when the King received the resigned Prime Minister Uzunović and the resignation was withdrawn. A feuilleton, 'Fathers and Daughters', mocked the exhausted vogue for stage dramas about sons rebelling against their fathers.
Translation
How Do We Eliminate the Danger of New Wars?
By Henry Fo [?] New York, October 10. It is about five years since one of the largest munitions manufacturers in the world sat here in this office in Dearborn and said to me: "Just wait for the next war. That will be a real war, and a treacherous one besides. It will be waged against the United States. Everyone will be against the United States — that is, everyone who can be brought to go along, and my feeling is that only a few will not go along. The leaders will be Japan and Mexico, and great pressure will be brought to bear on Canada, England and France." It seemed to me at the time that the man was talking without any reason at all. But he remained very serious and decided; he said that our commercial supremacy made us a natural object of attack, that we possess the greater part of the world's gold reserves, and that, moreover, every nation owes us money which it
The Uzunović Government Remains in Office
The Uzunović Government Remains in Office. Resignation Withdrawn. Telegram from our correspondent. Belgrade, October 16. The government crisis found its surprising resolution late at night. At 9 o'clock in the evening the King received the resigned Prime Minister Uzunović in an audience which until a quarter to eleven [?]
Fathers and Daughters
Fathers and Daughters. A Trial. Thank God, things have grown quiet around the parricides, and the word has once again become what it was: the name of a collar. Those militant sons who until recently invited paying spectators to their domestic calamities by turning them into dramas, and who cut the tablecloth between themselves and their fathers after first soiling it, are looking around for other complexes that will fill an evening; their drawing power has run out. Behind the messianic pose that people found in Matura candidates examining fifty-year-olds and play-actors teaching a father, the banner of liberation has long since ceased to billow; all that rustles now is the paper on which such things
Context
Uzunović's government and the fall of Pašić
The Belgrade telegram reports that the government crisis ended late on 16 October, when the King received the resigned Prime Minister Uzunović at 9 p.m. and the resignation was withdrawn. Nikola Uzunović, a politician of the People's Radical Party, had held the premiership only since 8 April 1926. He took over after Nikola Pašić, faced with a series of corruption scandals, was forced to resign. From the start Uzunović faced internal conflict within his own party, and a succession of short-term governments came and went under his leadership. The October crisis reported here belongs to that pattern. The excerpt breaks off before it explains why the cabinet had resigned or on what terms it stayed, so the cause of this particular crisis cannot be read from this page.
Why Belgrade cabinets depended on partners
The February 1925 election had left the Radicals as the largest faction in the National Assembly, but with only 123 of its 315 seats, short of a majority. Any Radical-led government therefore relied on partners. That dependence decided Uzunović's fate the following spring: in April 1927 he resigned after the Croatian Peasant Party decided to leave his government, and he was succeeded by Velimir Vukićević, also of the People's Radical Party. The reprieve the Neue Freie Presse reported in October 1926 thus kept the cabinet in office for roughly another six months.
"Every nation owes us money" and the 1926 war-debt quarrel
Ford's essay quotes a munitions manufacturer who argued that American commercial supremacy, gold holdings and the money every nation owed the United States made it a natural target. The debt question was especially sore in 1926. On 29 April 1926 France and the United States signed the Mellon–Berenger Agreement, fixing the amount and rate of repayment of France's war debt. The agreement greatly reduced what France owed and set relatively easy terms, yet it was deeply unpopular in France, where people felt the United States should waive the debt; 20,000 war veterans demonstrated in Paris against it, and the British were also critical. France wanted its payments linked to German reparations, which the United States would not accept, and Prohibition and punitive tariffs on French goods added to the friction. When the essay appeared in Vienna, French ratification was still pending; it was delayed until July 1929. The forecast that Japan and Mexico would lead a war against the United States is the manufacturer's claim as Ford reports it, not an established assessment.
The "parricides" of Expressionist drama
The feuilleton's opening joke rests on a double meaning: Vatermörder, "parricide", was also the name of a high stand-up collar, and the writer is glad the word has shrunk back to that. The militant sons it mocks are the heroes of Expressionist generational drama. Walter Hasenclever's Der Sohn, written in 1912, published in 1914 and first performed in 1916 at the Albert-Theater in Dresden, took the conflict between the generations as its subject and ends with the Son killing his father. The Vienna-born Arnolt Bronnen gave the theme its bluntest title in Vatermord (Parricide, 1922), whose "erotic, anti-bourgeois, black expressionism", according to The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, caused a sensation when it was eventually performed. By October 1926 the Viennese writer treats this wave as spent box-office material. The title "Fathers and Daughters" and the subtitle "A Trial" indicate that the piece turns to a court case involving daughters, but the excerpt ends before that turn.
Original
Wie beseitigen wir die Gefahr neuer Kriege?
Von Henry Fo [?] Newyork, 10. Oktober. Es ist etwa fünf Jahre her, daß einer der größten Munitionsfabrikanten der Welt hier in diesem Bureau in Deaborn saß und zu mir sagte: " Warten Sie nur bis zum nächsten Krieg. Das wird erst ein richtiger Krieg werden, und ein heimtückischer dazu. Er wird gegen die Vereinigten Staaten geführt werden. Alle werden gegen die Vereinigten Staaten sein, das heißt, alle, die man zum Mithalten bringen wird, und meinem Empfinden nach werden nur wenige nicht mithalten. Die Führer werden Japan und Mexiko sein und auf Kanada, England und Frankreich wird ein großer Druck ausgeübt werden. " Mir schien damals, als rede der Mann ohne jede Vernunft. Aber er blieb sehr ernst und entschieden, er sagte, daß unsere Handelssuprematie uns zu einem natürlichen Angriffsobjekt mache, daß wir den größten Teil der Goldvorräte der Welt besitzen und überdies uns jede Nation Geld schulde, das sie
Verbleiben der Regierung Uzunovic
Verbleiben der Regierung Uzunovic. Zurückziehung der Demission. Telegramm unseres Korrespondenten. Belgrad, 16. Oktober. Die Regierungskrise hat in später Nachtstunde ihre überraschende Lösung gefunden. Der König empfing um 9 Uhr abends den zurückgetretenen Ministerpräsidenten Uzunovic in Audienz, die bis ¾11 Uhr [?]
Väter und Töchter
Väter und Töchter. Ein Prozeß. Gottlob, um die Vatermörder ist es still und das Wort wieder geworden, was es war: ein Kragenname. Jene militanten Söhne, die noch vor kurzem zahlende Zuschauer zu ihren häuslichen Kalamitäten luden, indem sie diese zu Dramen machten und das Tischtuch zwischen sich und den Vätern zerschnitten, nachdem sie es befleckt hatten, sehen sich nach andern abendfüllenden Komplexen um; ihre Zugkraft hat aufgehört. Hinter der messianischen Attitüde, die man darin fand, daß Maturanten Fünfzigjährige prüften und Komödianten einen Vater lehrten, rauscht längst nicht mehr die Fahne der Befreiung, sondern raschelt nur noch das Papier, auf das man dergleichen