HERR SCHEIDEMANN ON GERMAN POLICY.

THREE BASIC PRINCIPLES.

BERLIN, THURSDAY. Herr Scheidemann, the Premier, speaking in the National Assembly at Weimar, said that German foreign policy in the future would be based on three principles: (1) Strict observance of all treaties; (2) unswerving protection of vital German interests; and (3) maintenance of a spirit of unreserved conciliation towards the whole world. Herr Sciheidemann, continuing, said: “It is therefore, a requirement of honesty that we should only undertake such obligations as can be harmonised with our vital interests. We must also be loyal to the world in general, and this means the endorsement of a spirit of unreserved conciliation towards all peoples. These three principles must be our guiding line for the common future.” Herr Scheidemann went on to say that they must not be found to fail when it was a matter of depriving the two sworn foes of international understanding, namely. Imperialism and Chauvinism, of all possibility of influencing their foreign policy in any direction. “We want,” he said, “an equal rapprochement between all peoples, and not a fresh division of the world into alliances and groups which at a dangerous moment go off like loaded rifles. We hope that the liquidation of the war in the East will soon be completed. We cannot let the shaping of our internal affairs be forced on us by Russia – (“Hear, hear.”) – but if Russia renounces her forcible propaganda of Bolshevism, we will gladly extend a brotherly hand to the Russian people, which, like ourselves, has had to pay for the false calculation made by its foe, Imperialism, with defeat, collapse, and the deepest misery. The bitterly hard road to new economic and State consolidation is common to us both. In many things we are mutually dependent. I hope that we shall be able to find a way to one another.” (Cheers.)

‘WE OPPOSE THE SOVIET REPUBLIC’

He further said: “I am. an opponent of a Soviet Government as a governing principle. I cannot forget as quickly as others who, like me, fought for a life-time under the watchword “Democracy” and now repudiate it. (Cheers from Social Democrats.) We oppose the Soviet Republic not only for reasons of world conception, not merely on internal political grounds, because we see in it the destroyer of the last remnant of political unity, but we oppose it because we want peace. We wage with the Chauvinism of a Soviet Government a life-and-death struggle for the sake of peace, without which we are ruined. We do not seek the alliances of the worldrevolution. They lead to murder and misery in the same way as the alliances of monarchies and imperialists. We want a great world alliance, the League of Nations, wherein equal nations can develop freely without the old fetters of armaments and without the new burdens of Bolshevistic civil war. That separates us to the extent of a world from the ideas of Lenin, who, even in 1910, boasted of having recommended that the disarmament should be struck off the Socialist programme, because the idea of the overcoming of Capitalism without civil war was Utopian. (Exclamations.) No. Without disarmament the League of Nations would be an empty formula and a perpetuation of force. (“Very true.”) If brute force as a means of settling differences between peoples is to be abolished, then we must reject it first in settling differences between our own compatriots. (Cheers.) War at home and war abroad, that is what the counsels and teaching of Lenin’s Bolshevism bring us.”