AT no time since the armistice has Germany been able to put forward @ stronger plea for consideration on the part of her former opponents than the present. This statement does not fail to take into account her wilful evasions of treaty obligations, nor does it suggest any pallia-_tion of the policy of passive resistance in the Ruhr," but is evoked by the belief that at length Germany sees herself face to face with an appalling cataclysm and is engaged in a life and death struggle—with herself. Not so many weeks ago the Communists of Germany recognized that a psychological moment had arrived, and they signalled to Moscow a message that the time was ripe to paint Germany and probably all Continental Europe a Soviet red. Curiously enough, Moscow declined to interest herself in the suggestion, and this fact will be worth while remembering when again we have to take Russian policy into consideration. For the moment it suggests a phase of reconstruction -with almost an abhorrence of revolution' In Germany itself, however, the dissatisfied elements are so numerous that disintegration from within has to be feared, and there are various, ways in. which it might tend to the wreck of Europe. The Communists might grasp the reins of government, and we know too well all that that would bring in its train But whether that would be worse than the Balkanization of the Sormer German Empire (to borrow' an apt expression applied by Dr. Bethmann-Hollwez to the whole of Europe) is not easy to say. Dr, von Kahr has his own ideas of the future of Bavaria—and they are monarehical—and there is a Dr. Dorten who, supplied with considerable funds, wishes to create a separate Rhineland Republic.
Tt stands to reason that if either of these attempts succeeds the process of Balkanization will be rapidly in full traifi. have to realize that. we are dealing with a thoroughly discontented and now unhappy nation, and a people without a practical monetary system, for the mark is no longer a medium.
People exist by barter. A German new-paper recently arrived from Furone recorded ench an arazing transaction as that a pound of butter was exchanged for an old bicycle, while apparently the negotiation of two hundredweights of hay for a small pig, which was also mentioned, wag really a market quotation. When things come to such a pitch a people, German or not German, must be ready for any change, ready to gamble on an improvement when they have little chance of being worse off. And it is this that makes the present a critical time and consequently calls attention to the qualities of the new' Chancellor, Dr. Stresemann. In him we fancy the chiefest hope of Germany lies, and this largely because of his intense ambition.- It is believed by his fellow countrymen that his animating principle is to go down in history as the man who saved Germany in her supreme hour of crisis, and if we accept this we gain a clue to his present tendencies and to the dangers attending them. First of all he would have had a Government taking the form of a Directory, ignoring the constitution of his Parliament, and was only because the Reichstag was too strong for him that ho abandoned the idea. Then, however, he modelled a Cabinet on only slightly modified lines, and has succeeded in. offending a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.