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Show GERMANISE GALLEDBY DEATH CHIEF EXECUTIVE SUCCUMBS AFTER VALIANT FIGHT FOLLOWING FOL-LOWING OPERATION Death Produces Complicated Situation Situa-tion in View of Approach-ing Approach-ing Presidential Election Berlin. Freiderich Ebert, first president of the German republic, died last week from peritonitis, which followed an operation for appendicitis. The former saddlemaker, whose skill in- guiding the infant republic through the first turbulent years of its existence, was acknowledged even by his bitter enemies, made a gallant fight for life. But his system had been undermined by an attack of influenza influ-enza before the operation and his heart was not equal to the burden imposed im-posed by the poison which had spread throughout his system. Around his bedside when the end came were his wife, their daughter, Amalie, and her husband, Dr. Wil-helm Wil-helm Jaeneke, and their sole son to survive the war, Freiderich, Jr. State Secretary Meissner was the only other oth-er person present, aside from the doctors doc-tors and nurses. The political attacks upon the president, pres-ident, which culminated in the Mag-deberg Mag-deberg trial, and the efforts to connect con-nect him with the Barmat loans scandal, scan-dal, added greatly to the burdens imposed im-posed upon him as chief executive of a new renublic. Putsches and threats of putsches and the jibes of the monarchists wtio could not bear the idea of a working man succeeding the Hohenzollerns, had helped to undermine his once rugged constitution. But the firmness with which he managed the political crisis arising from the tangled party system and the simple dignity with which Frau Ebert met her duties as first lady of Germany disarmed many of their sharpest critics. There was probably not another leader in Germany, his enemies admitted, ad-mitted, who could have succeeded where he did, and his death four months before the presidential election elec-tion produces more confusion in a political situation already badly muddled. mud-dled. President Ebert was the first of all the patriotic Germans to forget party lines when it became necessary to check the extremists, either in the radical or conservative camps. He frequently brought curses upon his head from the one side or the other by approving measures which they, according to their viewpoints, deemed either reactionary or too radical. His attitude won the confidence of the ambassadors and ministers accredited accre-dited to Berliu and he was a powerful power-ful factor in bringing about acceptance accept-ance of the Dawes plan which promises prom-ises to calm the storm that has raged about the reparation problem for so many years. Herr Ebert started life as a saddlemaker, sad-dlemaker, but years of experience as a labor organizer and official of unions, together with his wide training train-ing in practical politics developed him even as, his admirers pointed out, the late Samuel Gompers was developed in America. |
