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In claiming the Lorraine region of the Sarre, France merely asserts her right to her old frontiers; in claiming the coal beds of the Sarre, the French Government merely claims its own property.

To the historical side of the case, which dominates the debate over the matter, may be added a less sentimental but most powerful economic

case.

Before and during the war Germany's greatest strength lay in the coal with which she was so abundantly provided. It was this coal which permitted of the unheard-of development of German metallurgy. The lack of coal, on the other hand, has been for a century the cause of the industrial mediocrity of France which has been forced to buy

Le Petit Parisien

twenty million tons, a third of the total consumed, from abroad.

Germany's criminal destruction of our northern coal areas has cut our supply in half. Alsace and Lorraine use about twenty million tons. From whom shall they have it if our frontier remains that of 1815? We shall have to buy it of Germany, and shall find ourselves, after victory even, a tributary of the stranger for three fourths of our coal supply! And that'stranger' will be the Government of Prussia!

A return to the frontier of 1815 will have as its consequence the economic vassalage of France to Germany. Is it admissible, is it possible that the heroism of our soldiers and the immensity of our sacrifices should end with such a result?

DEER

BY JOHN DRINKWATER

SHY in their herding dwell the fallow deer.
They are spirits of wild sense. Nobody near
Comes upon their pastures. There a life they live,
Of sufficient beauty, phantom, fugitive,

Treading as in jungles free leopards do,

Printless as evelight, instant as dew.

The great kine are patient, and homecoming sheep
Know our bidding. The fallow deer keep

Delicate and far their counsels wild,

Never to be folded reconciled

To the spoiling hand as the poor flocks are;

Lightfoot, and swift, and unfamiliar,

These you may not hinder, unconfined
Beautiful flocks of the mind.

Reveille

WALTHER RATHENAU TO COLONEL HOUSE

A SENTIMENTAL APPEAL

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.

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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

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 believe in the great traditions of equal. It was only appearance, for we

lacked that essential thing for the inner stability of nations, domestic freedom. To-day we are on the verge of annihilation, which is unavoidable if Germany is mutilated according to the counsel of those who wish this result.

For this must be said plainly, simply, impressively, so that everyone shall understand the frightful result, every nation and every generation, those now living and those that are to come: What we are threatened with, what hatred would visit upon us, is annihilation - annihilation of German life and civilization now and for all future time.

I do not appeal to your pity, but to your sense of human brotherhood. I know that no one cherishes this sentiment more profoundly than you and Wilson, and that no nation entertains it more fully than the great American nation, accustomed as it is to freedom and self-accountability.

Mankind carries a common respon

Vorwärts

sibility. Every man shares in the responsibility for the fate of every other man whom he influences. Every nation shares responsibility for the fate of every other nation.

During these momentous days decisions are being made which are to determine the fate of humanity for centuries. Wilson has championed what no mundane authority has ever previously ventured to attempt: Peace, reconciliation, justice, and freedom for everyone. God grant that his words be made true.

If they are not made true, the old Sibylline oracle which Plutarch has handed down to us will apply: 'Victory will destroy the victors.' If they are made true, the world will be blessed with a new era, and the untold sacrifices of the war will not have been in vain.

I greet you with the trust of a man in his fellow man.

TO THOMAS MACDONAGH

'YOUTH who had garnered all that old song could give you,
And rarer music in places where the bittern cries,
What new strange symphonies, what new music thrills you,
Flashing in light-loud magic beneath wildering skies?

'Singer of dawn-songs you who drink now at the fountain
Cry out as your own poet of the bittern cried,
Flood that new song, deep, drunken, rapturous, about us,
So shall these parched, sad hearts, drink deep, be satisfied.'
By Seumas O'Sullivan

The Bookman

WAS LORD ROBERTS RIGHT?

A LETTER FROM LORD HALDANE

LORD HALDANE writes to the Times with reference to its article on 'The Future of Military Service' as follows:

'Sir: To the main thesis of the leading article on the future of military service which appeared in your issue of Friday there will be general assent. That thesis is, in effect, that policy must lie at the foundation of military organization. But those who have had to give close study to this principle ask for its formulation in a fashion still more precise.

"They insist that before any attempt is made to organize an army the scientific purpose for which it is required shall be ascertained and exactly defined. This was sought, to take an example, in 1906, when the plans were first made for organizing the Expeditionary Force. It was, indeed, hoped earnestly that the existing peace would remain unbroken. But it was held as of high importance to insure against a conceivable conflagration. The Fleet was enlarged and the navy estimates were raised from thirty-six millions, at which figure they then stood, to fiftyone, the figure to which they were brought by Mr. McKenna and Mr. Churchill. If there were to be a war with Germany in which we stood alone, our security against invasion was decided by the Committee of Imperial Defense to be ample. This conclusion was come to after much consideration, and after investigating specific points brought before it in much detail by Lord Roberts and his advisers personally. But the paradox remained that if France also were attacked along

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with us, instead of France being left alone, we might be in a less favorable situation. For if a successful invasion of that country should give Germany the Channel ports of France as naval bases, she might, by the use of submarines and long-range guns, seriously imperil the control of the Channel by our navy, and, as a consequence, our position as an island. Against this danger there was only one way of providing. If we had a large navy France had a large army. That army was not quite sufficient to guard against attack along the entire eastern frontier of France by the still larger army of Germany. But careful calculation made by the French General Staff and our own showed that the addition of a comparatively small but very highly trained and organized Expeditionary Army from Great Britain to coöperate by defending the northern portion of the French frontier in conjunction with the French armies would be sufficient, having regard to the coöperation which was certain of the armies of Russia in engaging the German armies in the East. To the margin which Great Britain might possibly be thus asked to provide an addition of about sixty per cent was made for greater security in the plan as carried out later on. We were thus to put in as our contribution, in the event of a war which we intended to avert by every step in our power, the greatest navy to command the seas that the world had ever seen, and six divisions in addition to a cavalry force, being the army required to make up the requisite margin of military strength. The Ex

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