country; its triumph would not mean the replacing of the prosperity of one nation by the prosperity of another. Bolshevism is the negation of nationalism and prosperity; these are the reasons why it is equally absurd to believe that it can be conquered by purely material arms, or that we can get round it by encircling it with an intellectual 'sanitary barrier.' Will you have it that Lenine and his men will stop before a line of policemen or customs house guards. Where it makes its nest, Bolshevism ruins all. It lives on the condition that it be always on the go. It is necessary that its chiefs shall always be able to say to the mob, 'You suffer because our régime is encircled by capitalistic States which hate and persecute you, but when we have conquered the wide earth, an equilibrium will be regained and you shall have Paradise.' The masses to whom this sort of propaganda is delivered believe themselves suffering for the redemption of mankind. A sort of fanaticism adds itself to their emotions, and exalts them. We shall have to meet this fanaticism with something beside barbed wire. We must oppose an ideal to it, the national ideal. Bolshevism wishes to destroy the homelands. Let us call our patriots to the defense.

The Russian patriots, of course, and also the patriots of all the nations which encircle Russia; above all others the patriots of Poland. The peril is greatest in Poland; it is there that the Allies can produce the maximum result with the minimum effort.

The peril is a pressing one. One of the first messages signed by Brockdorff-Rantzau* was sent to Warsaw. The secretary explains that the Ukrain

* Foreign Minister of the German revolutionary government.

Le Temps

ians are interfering with the retreat of the German troops and that these troops are no longer under the control of their officers. Then, these pretexts enumerated, he goes to the kernel of the matter. "The German Government,' he writes to the Polish authorities, 'begs you to consent immediately to the crossing of Polish territory by German troops, and to aid their journey in every possible manner. Should the contrary come to pass, this Government cannot prevent hundreds of thousands of German soldiers opening for themselves a way home into Germany through Poland.' While this threat appeared in the southeast of Poland, the Bolsheviki have announced that a Soviet has been formed at Vilna and that 'the assembly decided to address a greeting to the central executive committee of the Soviets of Russia, to the Red army, to the commissioners' council and to the Congress of German Soviets. But this even is not the whole story, German troops which have not been demobilized are concentrating (according to von Hindenburg's directions) round Posen.

The armistice was signed on the eleventh of November. What of the status of Dantzig? Polish troops are a military instrument ready for the hands of the Allies; Poland is a base for the political policy of the Allies . . . why are we waiting?

The more the Allies delay in occupying eastern Europe, the costlier will be the solution of eastern problems. There was a time when the Russian question could have been solved with 40,000 men. If we allow all our various units of force in the East to perish, what will be the cost of reorganizing Russia? And if Russia is not reorganized what will peace be worth?

THE restoration of Alsace-Lorraine, that is to say, of the territory taken from us in 1871, does not bring France to its old frontiers or restore to her the province of Lorraine in its integrity. To limit our claim to the present area of Alsace-Lorraine would be to imply our recognition of the frontier of 1815; it would mean that France for a second time signed the fatal treaty of that year.

The 1815 frontier was the frontier of a defeated nation; strategically it was very bad, for it aimed to give Prussia access to the principal routes by which France might be invaded; to that end, the treaty detached an important part of Lorraine, the region of the Sarre.

This region of the Sarre had been united to France in 1648, and shared the destinies of the duchy of Lorraine of which it was an integral part and one of the great defenses. For us, Sarrelouis constituted a lock on one of the gates of invasion; the town had been powerfully fortified by Louis XIV, whose name it keeps. Ney was born there.

In 1814, the Allies, among whom was to be found the King of Prussia, had allowed France to retain not only Sarrelouis and the right bank of the Sarre, but also Sarrebrück and the left bank. Why? Because they had recognized our historic right to the territory on the one hand, and the proprietary right of the French government to the coal mines of the region on the other.

The Sarre is, in fact, the centre of an important coal basin which was opened to use through the agency and the funds of the French government. Be

tween 1808 and 1811 Napoleon had caused the engineers of the mining bureau to survey the three hundred and sixty-seven square kilometres of the basin of the Sarre; the results of this work were registered in an atlas, a veritable register of discovered mines, and the whole business was officially recognized as the most considerable operation of its kind ever executed in France, perhaps in Europe even.

In 1814 Prussian troops occupied the region of Sarrebrück, and in 1815 the Prussian Government, to whose attention the importance of the coal beds had been brought, demanded a rectification of the frontier of the previous year. The intention of that Government to have the mines is revealed by the second frontier which follows the very edge of the coal veins which were then known.

But this was not all. The Government of Prussia had the effrontery to demand the results of the work of French engineers; it asked for the atlas in which they had registered the results of their deliberations. This requisition was entirely contrary to the stipulations of the treaty of Paris of 1814, nevertheless, the Government of Louis XVIII had the weakness to yield, and on the 30th of July, 1817, ceded to Prussia the precious documents she claimed.

There you have your irrefutable proof that the Prussian administration turned the work of French engineers to its own use, and that for one more time the French State had worked for the Roi de Prusse.

MR. COLONEL: For four years I have foreseen in the anguish of my heart the moment when all the hopes of my people, when all their national pride and self-respect, aye, when even faith in the justice of their cause would desert them. I have tried to imagine that life would cease, and that men would expire on the very streets from despair and hopelessness.

Nothing has happened. Life goes on. Men were like children playing about open graves.

Why do I write this to you?

Because the guilt of the German people is under discussion. The people went to war because they were told they must that it was inevitable. The people let themselves be killed and they killed others and destroyed property because they were told, 'It is inevitable.' Now when they stand facing destruction, they open their eyes with astonishment for the first time and inquire: Must this happen?'

More than a century ago the great nations of the West heard the alarm cry of revolution and roused themselves to reform. Until yesterday we had never had a German revolution; for the affair of 1848 was merely a goodnatured escapade of easy-going, conservative citizens. If Germany is guilty, this is its only guilt.

There are guilty individuals. In addition to the small group, who wanted a war out of insatiate thirst for power, we belong to that number. We, the tens or hundreds, who saw the war coming, who recognized its madness from the first, who knew its hopeless

ness, who condemned the violence and injustice that accompanied it, and who recognized that submarine warfare and the enmity of America were the beginning of its tragic end.

Our guilt is that we are still alive. We could not have made things otherwise.

I warned my people against war in my writings. When war was upon us, I organized our national supply of raw materials in order to prevent immediate disaster. My next task, to which I devoted my whole soul, was to bring about peace, reconciliation, repudiation of a policy of force and annexation. In July, 1917, I had my last personal interview with Ludendorff at the grand headquarters. I said to him, 'If you expect to enforce your unbounded demands, you will have to occupy London, Paris, and New York.' I pointed out to him the faulty figures and estimates of the navy and the impossibility of succeeding with the submarine campaign. He opposed to my criticism what he called his intuition; and that was only a reflection of his own unbounded authority. Only once have I counseled my nation to resistance. That was when this same Ludendorff forced the Government to adopt bankruptcy instead of liquidation.

Why do I tell you this?

To show you that all resistance was in vain against the old military Government, which had the power to crush every will and the information to enchain every intellect.

Germany is not guilty. In spite of all its parliaments the real wishes of

Germany were strangled by a frightful military incubus. The revolution has liberated the will of the German people for the first time in its history, and that will is for peace.

Germany has always been a country exposed to external dangers. A territory that might appropriately support 30,000,000 has come to be occupied by 70,000,000. These people have lived by performing services for other nations, and in addition have found time to bless the world with many fair products of the spirit.

Our foreign trade is shattered. We are losing Alsace with its petroleum and potash, and Lorraine with its iron ore. Our colonial possessions are in danger of being taken from us. We have left but a single important raw material coal. Our imperial union threatens to fly asunder. For three years our people have gone hungry and the population has ceased to grow. We are heavily in debt and have nothing with which to employ our labor. The peril of a huge war indemnity hovers over us. Our military power is disarmed. We are defenseless.

Why do I tell you this since you already know it? I do not do so in order to ask for mercy and pity, but in order to impress upon you a responsibility such as has not existed on the face of the earth since the human mind existed, and such as is not likely to exist again.

Mr. Colonel, our personal acquaintance was a short one. Nevertheless, you showed me some confidence, because I explained to you in confidence and sincerity the condition of my country, and assured you that only America could bring peace. My personal confidence in yourself, and in your friend and President, is unshakable. Moreover, never in the course of the war have I ceased for a moment to believe in the great traditions of

America, France, and England. Your ambassador will have told you that up to the last moment I advocated maintaining friendship with America, and I have not betrayed your confidence. Will it compromise you as a free representative of a free country, if I speak to you as a German and as a fellow man? If that is so, refuse me a hearing and say, 'I do not know you.'

Never since the history of the world began have three governments and their political leaders, Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George, possessed such a power.

Never since the history of the world began has the existence or non-existence of a vigorous, healthy, gifted, industrious people and Government been so dependent upon a single decision of responsible statesmen.

If for decades and centuries to come the blooming cities of Germany are to lie desolate and ruined, its industries are to remain prostrate, its intellect is to be unproductive in science and art, and millions of German men and women are to be torn from their native soil and driven into banishment — if this result befalls, will the tribunal of history and the judgment of God decree that justice has been done that nation, and that three statesmen have given a righteous decision?

Will such an act of violence introduce a period of good will among nations?

Mr. Colonel, my life has passed its prime. I hope and fear nothing hereafter for myself personally. My country can no longer use me. I fancy I shall not long survive its ruin. As a weak member of a people wounded to the heart, but still struggling for belated liberation and a remnant of life, I address you as the representative of the most aspiring of all nations.

Four years ago we seemed to be your equal. It was only appearance, for we