With its debate yesterday, the Reichstag has only half fulfilled the duty which necessarily arises from the external and internal situation of our country. Today, this situation calls for open, responsible speech, which at the same time becomes action precisely because of the publicity of the debate. In this respect, the situation is different now than in the first phase of the Ruhr conflict.

At that time, we, too, took the view that it was up to the government to develop political initiative on its own initiative and to lead the way, also leading the way in the formation of public opinion – that the left, in particular, did not need to be the first to take on the role of real political resolution, which is so thankless in Germany.

After all, it was precisely for this purpose that this Cuno government had been formed: a government of experts, a government of men of business and discountable signatures, a government whose political signature was entirely determined by the German People's Party – the very government that the opponents of the previous cabinets and the particularly large layers of the German bourgeoisie had always longed for.

Now she should show what she is capable of doing to save Germany, unlike her predecessors; she, only she, should lead the negotiations and be responsible for their outcome. The latter is still true today. It is still to be demanded that the Cuno government does not leave its post at the moment of the decision, as the Fehrenbach cabinet did in the spring of 1921, but that it perseveres until the end.

But the situation has changed in one important respect: the foreign policy action itself has been brought into the public eye by the course of events. Now we are at the public struggle of speeches and notes, which, through the public debate conducted before the whole world, are not only intended to bring to a solution the factual problems, but at the same time strive to mobilize the public opinion of the peoples as allies in this struggle.

In this struggle for the opinion of the peoples, however, the German government has so far had no success. She did not know how to speak a language that would resonate in the world. It has not tackled at all, which is an equally serious failure, the leadership of its own people on the path of political thinking (which is something much more serious than mere surrender to moods and feelings).

The meaningless statement by Frederic von Rosenberg's Foreign Minister in yesterday's session of the Reichstag, who in a situation like this had nothing else to say but that he could not and did not want to say anything, is an example of this. And that is why it is necessary for the parliamentary groups in the Reichstag to talk now.

That is why it is good that yesterday the spokesmen of the Social Democrats and the German-Nationals broke the silence – and a very regrettable mistake that the parties of the so-called bourgeois working group continued the policy of self-exclusion with the result that the only politician of these four parties who represents a political opinion now appears to the outside world is the People's Party leader Gustav Stresemann. who did not raise his voice yesterday in the Reichstag, but a few days ago again in the Berlin People's Party paper.

The Social Democratic spokesman has once again and emphatically stated that his party does not think of capitulation when it considers the possibilities and necessities of politics in addition to passive resistance, which is the highest patriotic civic duty. He quite rightly pointed out the four political problems which would have to be solved if a real peace agreement were to succeed: the amount of reparations and the pledges for reparations, what France called the question of political security and, finally, considerably inferior in importance to the first three problems, the question of industrial relations between Germany and France. the necessity of regulating the reciprocal supply of coke and ore, created by the separation of Lorraine from its close connection with Rhineland-Westphalia.