accord- to the law of numbers. The party system, they say, is incompatible with the conviction, so deeply intrenched in every Prussian heart, that each individual shall sacrifice himself to the interests of the nation. What the nation really needs is not elections where people can periodically vote for candidates nominated by parties; it is a system founded on a principle of competency and social hierarchy - a system which assigns each his due share of authority and obedience according to his practical ability, his moral and intellectual value. It is a system of councils, founded upon a solid professional organization. Germany is to-day the only country that recognizes professional representation side by side with political. The Economic Council of the Empire is functioning parallel with the Reichstag, which is jealous of its growing influence. The managers of industry even go so far as to say that representation of interests must entirely substitute the system of party representation.

They are so certain of their own strength that the Stinnes Press has reproved the Government for not having consulted German industry on the subject of the projects formulated at London in the beginning of December last. This time the scandal was so flagrant that Chancellor Cuno mentioned it in the Economic Council, claiming for the Government the right of directing the policies of the State, and expressing the opinion that the legitimate influence of economic circles must subordinate itself to subordinate itself to governmental action. The most important of the German industrial federations, the Imperial Industial Union, considered it its duty to issue a statement on the subject asserting its loyalty in the present difficult position of the country. It also declared that industry was ready to

coöperate with the Government and that any attempts to the contrary were criminal.

On the other hand, the political parties opposed to the People's Party seized the opportunity to condemn the industrials' attitude. We need only recall the reasonable considerations of the Frankfurter Zeitung on the subject. This paper says that it is wrong to speak of German industry, meaning by this German economics, as such a thing does not really exist as a political factor, because the German industrials do not have any unanimous, professional standpoint in regard to Reparations or government. What does exist is only a group grown powerful during the war, the leaders of which are indebted for their position to the disappearance of their satellites brother competitors. As a matter of fact, the managers of industry are far from being unanimous: every time the question came up of coming to the aid of the Government in solving financial matters, soliciting foreign loans, or paying Reparations in kind, they have never produced anything but a politic negative, each group limiting itself to criticizing and rejecting the propositions of the others.

But one solid bond unites all these groups: namely, their passion for the greatness of Germany. They continue to work for the realization of the dream of universal hegemony which has haunted the Teutonic brain since Leibnitz. For more than two centuries they have proclaimed the rights of Germany to all of Eastern France, from Metz to Provence, including the Dauphiné, the Lyonnais, and the whole left bank of the Rhone. Their plan has been to attain this object by carrying on a commercial war against France, which they averred would do more good than ten armies. The spirit of Germany, not yet ripe

in the seventeenth century for assimilating this doctrine, had now become so with the appearance of Fichte, Hegel, Treitschke, and the other and the other great apostles of Pan-Germanism. The seed which they sowed has fallen upon well-prepared ground, but the harvest has not been such as was expected by the French philosophers and litterateurs who, following the lead of Madame de Staël, had conjured up a very distorted idea of the German people.

The Germany of the philosophers has been succeeded by that of the soldiers. To-day we have that of the industrials. Their patriotism, shrunk to a most limited kind of nationalism, allies itself, as we have seen, with a feeling of a most profound contempt for the German State. In order to realize their desires of seeing Germany more and more powerful, they have never ceased to indicate what in their opinion was the surest means of enriching every German field of production. They themselves have stood at the very head of this movement, and worked with a tenacity and an energy that must be called prodigious for the success of their enterprises. It is sufficient to call attention to the improvement in technic, the creation of groups that have worked for lower prices in raw materials, and the search for greater markets; indirectly as well, in demanding that the State make a bold front against the demands of the Socialists, which tended to decrease the producing power of the workman by reducing hours of work. They have even attacked the State itself, which was too compliant to resist, and secured all sorts of favors in the form of the reduction of duties on imports, and of subventions, either open or disguised.

The Popular Party has adopted

their programme. At the basis of production we find the extraction of coal and the cultivation of grain. It was therefore necessary to cut down the deliveries of coal to the Entente, in order to preserve as much coal as possible for German industry, which needed it, and to make an end of the system of economic restraint which was the death of German agriculture. It is also absolutely necessary to give up the absurd fiscal policy which hampers the agglomeration of capital and favors its consumption beyond unreasonable bounds; all of which means that large fortunes are to be protected.

Above all, it is a matter of necessity to free Germany from the humiliations to which she has been subjected, and which have caused her to be treated throughout the world as an individual possessing only minor rights. Germany must be allowed to enjoy the same commercial advantages as all other peoples.

The whole policy of German industrials is extremely clear. They simply refuse to recognize the obligations of the Treaty of Versailles. After having done their part in pushing Germany into the war-a a war in which they expected to aggrandize themselves by destroying the industries of France and Belgium - they will not now acknowledge that they have lost; or rather, in spite of their military defeat, they still claim to have gained the economic victory. The fight that we are carrying on against them to-day in the Ruhr should be carried to such a point as to make them recognize for all time the futility of this hope. This direct action will be more efficacious than all the negotiations at Berlin. After having conquered the armies of Germany we must now fully control her industries.

A RAY of hope illumines the soul of our people since the Cuno Cabinet took up the struggle over the Ruhr, and since we learned with what vigor the men of the mining country can act. Moreover, from these considerations taken together, even the uninitiated get a strong impression that there is 'management' of some kind behind our resistance to the brutal violence of our ancestral foe. Our lack of leadership is what has allowed us to sink so deep into the abyss, and what has in recent years apparently allowed every hope to vanish.

But courage begets courage, and therefore we may hope that France's plundering excursion into Baden will meet with resistance like that in Westphalia. In spite of assiduous propaganda on the part of the French, the sympathies of the whole world are on our side in the present struggle. In greater or less degree this will be the case with the better classes even of those nations who during the war fought on the side of France. The pretexts under which France seeks to justify her raid upon our defenseless and industrious country were too cynical and bore their falsehood too clearly on their face for it to be otherwise. If we win through the test which fate now lays upon us, it will be proof enough that the will for selfassertion and the strength of life have not yet been lost to the German soul.

At a stroke our whole political position will alter because once again all nations will have to reckon with the German people. We shall cease to be a mere object of exploitation. We will put our trust in the men who, either before the curtain or behind it, are controlling the present resistance. Their task is made hard enough by the long years during which political dilettantes pursued their policy of fulfilling the treaty requirements, which has so sadly affected our economic position.

Whoever is a German at heart, no matter to what party or to what faith he may belong, will sink his own belief and his own desires completely in view of the task that fate imposes on us to-day. No need to say that we must support the men who stand at the front to-day by every means in our power. After the terrible trials through which we have come, the danger does not lie there but rather behind the front and even in the unoccupied territory. To-day the advocates of a weakling policy, the men of fleeting importance, and the party egoists, hold themselves aloof because they fear that the increased concern for the common good and for self-assertion may cast them to one side.

We do not know what temporary hardships stand before us in this new kind of struggle in the Ruhr. Then in

deed the hour may come when the poisonous elements in our politic body will rise again to win the mastery. That is why we must guard against them in advance- if necessary, with still greater severity. Down with all elements that seek to destroy the united front of to-day and to cripple the resistance of Germany!

No one can doubt that a foreign policy conscious of its aim and corresponding to the present situation must support our resistance to the French raid. A private citizen, lacking information as to the momentary changes of the situation, must restrain himself. He cannot reach a judgment on the new way now opening before us, and hence to-day is a time for trust. Our Parliament itself does not possess complete information on the situation, but the two chief elements about which it is permissible to speak rise clear and unmistakable on the political horizon. These are our relations with England and with France.

To-day a direct antagonism between ourselves and the Anglo-Saxons no longer exists. Before the war this antagonism was unavoidable, and could be met only with adequate power and wise statesmanship. This is not the place in which to discuss the manifold and easily refuted excuses put forth by the advocates of a policy of weakness; but even those who have made it their life work to win for Germany a place equal to England's recognize the accomplished fact- though with a deep sense of anguish. The Germans had not developed enough, or were not fitted to rise to the rank of a people capable of world dominion; and so we must abandon in large measure our endeavor to win the spiritual and material treasures of the sea. Even our business will enjoy the use of the sea only in a limited degree, and will have to consider the complete alteration of condi

tions in starting out upon the ways where any serious antagonism with the Anglo-Saxons is out of the question. As soon as the temporary boom in our business-made possible by the lowered value of our money is at an end, fear of any considerable business competition will vanish in the eyes of even the maddest Englishman.

Under these circumstances, nothing any longer obstructs an understanding with England. We are perfectly clear on one point that such a step is not based on our desire or on flirtatious inclination, but only on a foundation of real advantage to each side. Neither must we forget that England is now more deeply interested in Europe than in earlier days. Therefore, and even though we are the beaten party, we should not weakly and humbly run after England, but we should rather stand aside and wait. The English will come to us of themselves if their interests urge them on. Unduly obvious efforts at reconciliation sometimes achieve the opposite of what they intend. One remembers the meetings of Fehrenbach with Lloyd George at Spa.

The English do not love us now, and they have never loved us; while it will be hard for us to forget their barbarous ways of waging war, which have become a part of their mental equipment through their constant conflicts with barbarous and half-civilized peoples. To this mentality also belongs their way of whipping up hatred and slander to a gigantic extent throughout the whole world, which they regard as a justifiable means of warfare. Even so great and noble a sailor as Nelson believed, like the people of his age: 'Every Englishman must hate every Frenchman from the bottom of his soul.'

Such conceptions form no part of our character and our historical development, as we proved beyond dispute in our great war of unification. This char

acteristic of ours was recognized at that time by Frenchmen of independent thought, such as the famous Count Gobineau. One remembers the knightly conduct of our old Emperor toward the foe. When Paris was besieged, we had, in place of badly needed munitions, thousands of wagons loaded with provisions for the sole purpose of aiding the starving population of Paris immediately after they surrendered. That is why it was so wholly inconceivable to us that such a different course of action should be taken in the autumn of 1918, and the blockade should be continued another half year after its military purpose had been completely achieved and our people were left wholly defenseless. The continuation of the blockade, as is well known, cost eight hundred thousand Germans, mostly women and children, their lives. Purposeless brutality, which is not wise even in one's own interests, does not especially be long, however, to the English nature. Whatever feelings one may have as relations now stand, there is no choice before us so far as the English are concerned: Zähne aufeinander und durch! (Set your teeth and go through with it!)

Our relations to the French, however, are quite different. In the last two hundred and fifty years they have revealed themselves more than twenty times as robbers plain and simple, the bloodiest-minded inciters to war; and, since we once whacked these dangerous robbers over the fingers, their pride and haughtiness have been turned against us in sadistic hatred. Meantime Poincaré and Clemenceau have been unmasked as malevolent war-makers, and with them the greater part of the French people. The French have set themselves up, in their souls and in their nature, as the incarnation of evil

among the peoples of the continent of Europe. They pursue the annihilation of our country with unappeasable ferocity, perhaps only because-except for our lack of national feeling they recognize our superiority.

With evil itself we must make no compromise. We must hate it. In our present position we must work with moral forces only, although the hatred of our people against the French may glow white-hot. Those who manage our affairs of state can therefore not afford to lose their cool self-possession, but hatred against the French has become a necessity of life for us. It has been instilled in every class of our people by the French themselves.

Love and hatred are the strongest forces in the world of men. I hope that sometime in the distant future love may be victorious, but in ages past hate was, and for a hundred years to come hate will be, the most powerful force in the struggles of nations for their existence. The hatred of our enemies, urged on by the most refined means and the wildest lies, materially contributed to our downfall, while our own efforts at reconciliation and our weak complaints have degraded us in the eyes of the enemy and of the whole world. Hatred of evil is not unchristian. The selfassertion of every individual man, still more of a nation, is a duty, and since we need hatred for our self-assertion, we will instill it into the heart of every German, and we will let it flame up in fire on every mountain-top of our Fatherland.

Fate seems to have called the French to the historic rôle of driving our nation into unity through force exerted from without. That they have taken this part upon themselves again to-day is one gleam of light for us in a situation that otherwise is dark enough.