Abstract

The Reparations Referendum

The German Nationalist Party has just concluded an excellent example of hara-kiri. No other name can be applied to its inexplicable conduct in forcing a popular referendum on the adoption of the Young Plan. Under this initiative provision, a two weeks' period is allowed within which voters may inscribe their names in order to make up the required 10 per cent. In accordance with the constitutional procedure, the Nationalists put forward a measure repudiating war guilt and rejecting payment of any further reparations. The necessary number of signatures to place the measure before the country has been secured, but a proposal whose least result would be the collapse of the credit of the Reich and the indefinite prolongation of the Rhineland occupation cannot, of course, hope for the assent of more than half the electorate.