RANTZAU’S BLUNDERING

From Perceval Landon. Paris, Monday Afternoon.

The reception of the German counter-proposals published this morning has been what might have been expected. Mild amazement has been shown that the Germans should have so entirely mistaken, or pretended to mistake, the position in which they are now placed. From end to end of these suggested amendments there runs an assumption that the Germans and the Allies are treating with each other as equals at a conference in normal times of peace. From our point of view this is entirely an advantage. It is a continuation on paper of the arrogance which at the presentation of the terms drew the Allies together in a common realisation of the unchangeable nature of the German. When Brockdorffrantzau read from his seat his carefully-weighed piece of theatrical insolence on May 7 he taught most of the Allied delegates present a lesson which even five years of full information about the Teuton character had not been able to instil into them. In the light of that incident the German communications, speeches, actions, and protests alike have since been looked on from a new point of view. Even their apologists and sobered counsellors have been heard with continual suspicion. By that act of arrogance they threw away any chance they might otherwise have had of continuing their policy of deception, and they have themselves only to thank that not a clause or a petition of their counter-proposals has been read by the Allies without mistrust. By it, they deliberately placed themselves in the position of men on whose word no reliance can be put, even when they are humbled to the dust. In short, if ever a man deserved to be tried for high treason by his own countrymen, it is Brockdorff-rantzau