Germans Ridicule Berne Conference.

New York Times 100 years ago today, May 18, 1913:
Jingo Papers Refuse to Treat Seriously Whitsuntide Franco-German Meeting.
TOO MANY 'PROFESSIONALS'
Critics Point Sarcastically to the Class of Politicians Who Made Up the German Delegation.
By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times.
    BERLIN, May 17.— The Franco-German Peace and Disarmament Conference, which assembled on the neutral soil of Berne, Switzerland, over Whitsuntide, attracted only minor attention in Germany.
    The delegates of the Fatherland were recruited from the professional peacemakers class and the Radical and Socialist Parties, which have little effective influence on the control of affairs in this country.
    The French delegation was a considerably more representative and authoritative body, both because of its numerical superiority and its greater power over public opinion on the other side of the Rhine. The Pan-German, Jingo, and armorplate papers have been launching broadsides of ridicule and sarcasm at the Berne Conference. The participants are branded as fanatics, "conspicuously blind to the perilous state of affairs in Europe at the present moment"; their deliberations are declared to be destined to vanish into thin air and to be entirely forgotten before the Summer is over.
    German delegates returning from Berne contribute articles to the press asserting that the ironical rejoicings of the "war party" and its organs are premature. It is insisted that the Conference marks a red-letter epoch in the history of international peace and the disarmament movement. "Effective seeds " are said to have been planted which are destined to bear fruit, even if it takes a long time for them to ripen.
    The deliberations of the Conference are described as having made it perfectly plain that Franco-German discord has no actual basis in fact, and is kept alive artificially by professional war baiters in both countries.
    The consensus of German opinion on the Conference is that until France accepts the loss of Alsace-Lorraine as an accomplished and irreparable fact the Franco-German atmosphere will remain charged with gunpowder and the hope of a genuine reapprochement of the two countries will continue more or less illusory.