At Rheims, martyred memorial city of World War destruction, 4,000 pacifists from 30 countries assembled last week for the Fifth International Democratic Peace Conference. Nine hundred of the delegates were young Germans, representing almost every German city. At the first session, the present month of August, 1926, was proclaimed "international peace month," the delegates voting to encamp in tents upon the onetime World War battlefields of France through Aug. 29, "in order to pursue an intensive study of international peace work."
As everyone knows, former French Premiers Briand, Caillaux, Painlevé and Herriot, pacifists all, have consistently supported all International Democratic Peace Conferences.
At Berlin last week a further manifestation of post-War pacifism came to light with the opening of a great anti-War exhibit, featuring mammoth pacifist cartoons by virile German Trench-Artist Otto Dix.
Ludendorff's Complaint. Unsettled by these developments, famed militarist-Fascist-reactionary General Erich von Ludendorff contributed an article to the ultra-Fascist Deutsche Wochenschau last week in which he bitterly declared: "The War-distress of Germans does not seem to have been sufficiently great, or to have lasted long enough. The German people do not seem to be clever enough as yet to arise and fulfill their destiny. There is spreading among Germans a spineless nonresistance to the Anglo-U. S. scheme for a pan-Dawes Europe in which Germany and perhaps France seem destined to the status of tax-farmed debtor colonies."
Accord. The initialing of a Franco-German preliminary commercial accord, at Paris last week furnished substantial proof that the fiscal problems of France and Germany are indeed engendering a mutual fiscal interdependence unthinkable before the War.
Briefly, Germany accords France "most-favored nation" commercial status under the agreement, and France extends similar trade preference to Germary, though avoiding by disguised phraseology the term "most-favored nation." As initialed, the accord becomes effective Aug. 20, 1926, is renewable every six months, is expected to smooth the way for a formal Franco-German trade treaty of similar scope.