The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 8 (April 1, 1932.)
Briand's Half-done Work
Briand's Half-done Work.
Elections of extreme importance to the world take place in 1932 in Europe and America, By the time these notes are published the reader will probably know whether Hindenburg remains the compromise President of Germany or whether Hitler has displaced him with a policy of repudiating the reparations debt to France. In May there are elections in France, and it seems that the Socialist Radical policy is definitely to cancel German reparations; so there is just a chance that Hitler's grievance (and therefore his power) will be removed, and that the way may be opened for debt cancellation from America downwards. But the old spirit among the French dies hard. One might have thought it would be silent by the coffin of Briand, “author of Locarno,” architect of Franco-German co-operation; planner of the United States of Europe. Yet Paris press opponents threw insults at his cold ashes, even while Sir Austen Chamberlain acclaimed “The Greatest European of us all!”