HELMLESS GOVERNMENT

The perplexities engendered by the Bloc system are again fully illustrated in the fragmentary condition of German parties. Since the last election, five months ago, there has been no effective government in Germany. The acceptance of the Dawes plan, upon which internal stability and international standing depend, has been prevented by the jealous quarrels of widely severed blocs.

Chancellor Marx's original plan was to unite the three bourgeois parties--Streseman's People's Party, Catholic Centrists, and Democrats--leaving the irreconcilable Nationalists and the Socialists on the right and left wings. Finding that no effective majority could thus be established in the Reichstag, Dr. Marx made overtures to the Nationalists. They refused, and the Democrats, affronted at the prospect of cooperating with the Nationalists, withdrew from the coalition. The continuance of the Cabinet became impossible, and at Chancellor Marx's request President Ebert is about to call a new election.

It is possible that the German electorate, anxious for peace, will swing towards the moderate coalition, weakening the virulence of the Nationalist opposition. The liberal parties under the leadership of Marx will then be able to exert a unified control over the Reichstag majority, to put through the Dawes plan and to secure admission into the League. Beyond these foreign questions, the constituent parties of the coalition are hopelessly at loggerheads, and, these presiding problems of international relations once settled, will undoubtedly relapse into the usual chaotic multidivision of Continental politics.