COLORLESS SAYS LORD ON GERMAN ELECTIONS

The German elections, the results of which were announced yesterday, were colorless and indecisive, in the opinion of Professor Robert Howard Lord '06 of the Department of History. He declared the result showed that the German people were inclined to give the Republic another lease of life and to prevent, for the present at least, a revival of the monarchy.

Professor Lord said: "The German election has been strikingly destitute of dramatic quality. There were no landslides for any one party such as occurred in England and the United States. The issues involved were surely great enough. In the foreground was the question of the acceptance or repudiation of the Dawes plan, and behind loomed the still greater issue of the Monarchy or the Republic, of the ideals symbolized in the old red, white and black banner on one side and the new red, black and gold banner on the other, but these issues are not new to the German electorate.

No Clear Majority in May

"The larger issue has been presented at nearly all the national elections since 1918 and the voters have already had a chance to express themselves on the Dawes plan at the election held in May of this year. The elections held at that time had produced a very indecisive and unsatisfactory verdict with no clear majority for the coalition of Social Democrats, Centrists and Democrats, Centrists and Democrats which has recently been in power.

"The outcome of the May elections was similar to that of the English elections at the beginning of the year which also gave no majority to any one party. Just as the unpleasant situation in England has been remedied in the last elections and the Tory landslide, so it was hoped that the new German elections would produce a working majority for the coalition party in Germany. The actual result of the elections has been a disappointment in this respect.

"While the parliamentary situation is thus left pretty much as before, it is at any rate encouraging that in Germany as a whole the voters have administered a stinging defeat to General Ludendorf and his crew of 'fire eaters'."

When asked what probable effect this election would have on the plans of the Monarchists to restore the Hohenzollerns to the throne of the German Empire, Professor Lord said. "The elections seem to reflect pretty accurately the still bewildered and uncertain state of mind of the German people, still torn between old loyalties and new ideals. Now that the Dawes Plan is actually in force and Germany's political and economic situation, so appalling only a year ago, is now beginning to improve rapidly, the moderate parties would seem to have some chance of convincing the German people that their best interests are bound up with the present regime, and that the word 'Republic', hitherto associated in the minds of so many Germans only with defeat, humiliation and misery, may come to mean peace, prosperity, and restoration to an honorable place among the nations of the world.