Old Paul on the Rhine

In the tempestuous Reichstag there were shouts of "Down with Hindenburg!" last week (see col. 2), but no such blatant outburst marred the triumphant passage of Old Paul through the newly liberated Rhineland (TIME, July 14 et seq.). In city after city massed thousands greeted the venerable president first with a reverent hush, then with a tornado of delirious "hochs!"

At Wiesbaden in the early evening the 82-year-old Field-Marshal showed his only sign of strain. He excused himself from watching hundreds of schoolchildren enact the jubilation of the Elbe, the Voder, the Danube and several other German rivers at the liberation of "Their Sister, the Rhine."

Speaking with visible weariness to an immense throng at Mainz, struggling to read his speech in a loud ringing voice which quavered now and then, Old Paul cried:

"If we turn our gaze from today to tomorrow, we hope that this day of liberation from foreign occupation marks a step forward on the way to true peace and complete liberty. . . .

"Today we lack many things appertaining to complete equality. This territory, now evacuated, still is subject to regulations which limit Germany's self-deter-mination and her sovereignty. Even today the German land on the Saar is separated from the mother country, under an administration alien to it. We will hope that our German brothers and sisters on the Saar, to whom we in this hour give a pledge of our gratitude for their loyal attitude, will soon be reunited with us." (Administered by the League today, the Saar will decide by plebiscite in 1935 whether to continue in status quo, unite with France or unite with Germany.)

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