Friedrich Ebert, President of the Reich, is dead

Berlin, February 28. The President of the Reich, Mr. Ebert, died this morning at 10:45 without having regained consciousness… Mrs. Ebert and her children, as well as her son-in-law, Dr. Jenieke, and the Secretary of State, Dr. Meissner, were at his bedside.

President Ebert died yesterday morning as a result of the surgical operation he had undergone in recent days. The condolences that the French government has presented to the German Embassy are not just courtesy. We certainly regret the death of the man who, as President of the Republic, embodied the revolution of 1918 and the Weimar Constitution that emerged from it. Without doubt, the German Republicans have given us several disappointments. They have inexperience? cowardice? worked poorly to consolidate a victory that should have been theirs for good. We can, for our part, reproach them for this. The National Bloc, which has never supported them except with its mockery and suspicions, is ill-founded, on the other hand, in proclaiming today the collapse of a work whose significance it has always wanted to ignore.

Without doubt, after the advent of the imperial Luther-Stresemann cabinet, after the failure, in Prussia, of the Braun and Marx cabinets, this death is a serious event. President Ebert had known how to choose men like Wirth, Fehrenbach, Erzberger, Rathenau. If the Republic, which he had made with Scheidemann, had been truly in danger, Ebert would have defended it without fail.

The President of the Reich possesses considerable powers. He is at liberty to proclaim a state of siege, to suppress the fundamental guarantees enshrined in Article 48 of the Constitution. A monarchist lodged in the place could therefore easily prepare a restoration. Now the plebiscite by which a thirty-five-year-old German, whether a small tailor like Ebert, or Wittelsbach or Hohenzollern, must be elected for seven years by a majority of votes, can favour, more than honest politicians, noisy personalities. Without going as far as the crown prince, we remember that there was serious talk of a Hindenburg candidacy in 1922... When, during the drafting of the Constitution, the nationalists had the exclusion clause affecting the members of the old reigning families rejected, they were perhaps thinking of our Second Empire. But, when it is appropriate to designate a successor to President Ebert, we like to think that the democrats across the Rhine, knowing the danger, will remember the responsibilities incumbent upon them. The time has come for them to work fiercely.

It is too early to speak of possible candidacies. The name of the former Chancellor Marx has been mentioned. But this Catholic of the Centre will have all the Protestants against him, it is to be feared.

It seems that in Berlin they want to have the Reichstag appoint a provisional president and postpone the election until later. We will wait impatiently. The German people will tell us, this time, without hesitation, whether we can hope in them or whether we must despair. Because it cannot be a question of cultivating their illusions, but of forming a perfectly reasonable opinion of the Reich of today. The popular consultation will help us to do this. At a time when Berlin is preparing to propose to us pacts which would doubtless add nothing, for the West, to the Treaty of Versailles and, perhaps, would make the status of Eastern Europe more vulnerable. It is important to monitor, without prejudice, but with the greatest care, internal or external, all German manifestations.

HENRY BARDE.