At Locarno

Upon Mayor Rusca of Locarno, Switzerland, there descended last week the momentous duty of opening officially a diplomatic conference at which it is hoped to guarantee the frontiers of Germany and bring her within the League. With an excellent grace the Mayor of this tiny village welcomed the Foreign Ministers of Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Belgium. He made them comfortable in a huge austere courtroom on the second floor of his Palais de Justice, declared in a few words that the conference was in session, and vanished like the kindly but unimportant public servant that he is.

Remained the distinguished conferees. Behind doors supposed to be sealed to every rumor, they set about to persuade one another that each one's way of accomplishing the basic and mutually admitted aims of the conference was the best. As rumors emerged in ways devious and strange, it was thought that a notable disagreement was in progress as to under just what circumstances Germany would be willing to enter the League.

At the end of a long week of waiting, correspondents were allowed to report that Herr Stresemann had definitely obtained the acceptance by M. Briand and Mr. Chamberlain of a mutual compromise under which, if Germany enters the League, she will be excused as an officially disarmed power from certain of the military obligations incumbent upon ordinary member states. That bit of news-grist and an announcement by the Italian delegation that Italy would be willing to join with England in guaranteeing the peace of the Rhine, came as a refreshing change from the following events of pseudo-importance which were flashed over the cables of the world earlier in the week:

1) Herr Stresemann and Dr. Luther took the peculiar precaution of alighting from the train which was to have brought them to Locarno, at the little junction of Bellinzona, from which they motored to Locarno after dark. It was confidently asserted that this was done because the Berlin police had detected a plot by German Monarchists to assassinate Herr Stresemann rather than let him negotiate a pact which they consider discreditable to Germany with the Allies; 2) Dr. Luther and M. Briand went off together to a little inn beside Lake Maggiore and consumed refreshments for which M. Briand paid; 3) Austen Chamberlain declared that the secrecy being observed was not that of the wicked, old-fashioned secret diplomacy, "because the final determinations of the conference would be made public," instead of embodied in "secret treaties" which would not be revealed to the peoples for or against whose interests they were made; 4) M. Briand, Mr. Chamberlain, Herr Stresemann and Dr. Luther all went for a boat ride.