According to a wire message that we received from Koblenz, the Interallied Rhineland Commission informed the Reich Commissioner in a letter dated January 31 that they had closed the Frankfurter Zeitung because of the articles "They are Marching" from January 16 and "The Regiment of Terror" from January 16 January 21 for a period of one month for the occupied territory.

The first article "They are Marching" is about that chatter of harmless Rhenish mockery about the French marching to the Ruhr front, which every reader of our feuilleton will remember with pleasure and whose author was one of the first poets in the Rhineland, one of the first among today's German poets at all.

The second article that gave offense to the Rhineland Commission was a brief preliminary remark before the first outrageous telegrams about arrests and expulsions in the Ruhr and in Wiesbaden.

We are putting it here again in full, so that the whole world can see how things are with foreign rule on the Rhine.

So the article is called:

The regiment of terror

"Since German officials, entrepreneurs and workers do not voluntarily perform slave labor, they are now to be forced to do so by force of arms.

The managers of the state mines in the Ruhr area, the large mine owners have been arrested and are being brought to a court-martial in Mainz.

Other officials are expelled and the expulsion takes the most ruthless forms.

Even the families have to leave the Rhenish country.

All for no other reason than that officials dutifully carried out orders from their government.

The 'Frankfurter Zeitung' already pointed out in yesterday's evening paper how all of us Germans have a duty today and in the future to be grateful to the victims of French policy of violence and to actively show our gratitude.

The industrial leaders also deserve special recognition, who, fully aware of the consequences, make all the required sacrifices and endanger their own works in order not to have to join forces with an invading army against the fatherland.

Mr. Poincaré will not force these men to their knees;

Between the Rhine, Lippe, Ruhe and Wupper they have bones that are too hard and heads that are too hard.

But also elsewhere in the Rhenish lands, the population and officials are ready for a united defense.

In vain Poincaré will have jeopardized the honor of the French name.

After such an act of violence as it began to happen to our people that day, can one choose the first words calmer and more controlled?

We have also spoken in stronger tones, and we will never stop speaking the truth loudly and openly, but the Inter-Allied Rhineland Commission will not have flattered itself by bans or other measures to silence us.

Your goal is different.

She wants to cut off the Rhineland from the rest of Germany not only economically, but also intellectually and in terms of information.

That is why newspaper bans are now being enacted en masse.

Therein lies the system.

One hopes to wear down the Rhinelanders and the Germans in the Ruhr faster in this way.

But our word about hard bones and hard heads still holds true.

As little as we allow ourselves to be influenced by material damage or threats, it will not be possible to defeat the Rhinelanders.

If the newspapers, which are their mouthpiece, are taken away from them, the right word will go from mouth to mouth and it will roar out so loudly from Rhenish lips that many violent French politicians will cover their ears in fear.

But if one wants to ban the "Frankfurter Zeitung" on the Rhine from speaking, it will try to speak all the more clearly to the rest of the German people and all the more urgently to the other peoples of civilized earth "The regiment of terror", Mr. Poincaré on the Rhine and exercise dysentery.”