to live for generations poor and enslaved, But the harder the enemy forges our slaves' shackles the sooner shall we burst them.

To be sure, German strength at present is lamed by a shameful armistice, which robbed us of our weapons, and by a revolution, which robbed us of our discipline. But German strength persists unbroken and the fury for battle continues to live in the German races. Our enemies should not forget this in discussing the peace terms.

A peace that humiliates the German people and reduces it to serfdom forms the seed for a new war, more terrible than the world war, which must break out for the freedom of the Fatherland. The experiences of the world war must not sink into the oblivion of the past, rather must its lessons be brought to light and explained.

The Government must see to it that the General Staff and the War Ministry continue to work with considerably increased budgets. The smaller the peacetime size of the army, the greater and more extensive must be the peace work of the General Staff and War Ministry, whose duty it must be to extract lessons for the future from our failures.

The Tageszeitung said:

One thing is certain, there can be no question of this being a peace of justice. What a peace of justice after the Entente pattern and in accordance with French desire looks like is shown by the conditions, which leave nothing of Germany but a torn and tattered territory.

The Freiheit said that, compared with the policy Germany pursued at BrestLitovsk, the Entente peace "must be termed quite moderate," but it argued that the terms were in sharp contradicPresident Wilson's Fourteen tion to Points, and that if peace is to be built on this compromise it assuredly can have no firm and lasting foundation.

"A peace of annihilation," was the caption used by Vorwärts, which said:

If we sign this peace it is because we are bound by force, but in our hearts we resolutely reject it. Such a peace is an attempt to exterminate a nation, not by

force of arms, but by a means more brutal, economic slavery.

The Frankfurter Zeitung said:

We are at the graveside of right. The only doubt is whether it also means the graveside of the German Nation. Never has murder been committed in more courteous form or with more cynical equanimity. The German reply will have to consider that the draft deviates from Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points as far as the east is from the west.

The financial writers commented exhaustively on financial problems. They held that solution of these would be rendered impossible by the peace terms, which would mean the destruction of Germany. The Tageblatt's financial expert said that Germany had hoped, if not in this generation, at least in the next, to be able to recover and live by her own work, but that this belief had now been completely upset. The Vossische Zeitung estimated that the indemnity would total 180,000,000,000 marks gold, and declared that the Allies had not taken into account the war material and the surrendered German Navy. A smaller and weaker Germany, the writer declared, would be unable to pay the indemnity.

VIEW OF HARDEN

In an article published by Maximilian Harden, editor of the Zukunft, on May 11, he said:

The peace conditions are not harder than I expected. They were unpleasant to the greater part of the people, but could one really have expected them otherwise? The Germans have not given very convincing mental guarantees during the six months since the revolution that they have. changed their system. On the contrary, the present Government and the press have used the same methods of incitement, the same tricks of bluff, as under the old rule of the petty nobility.

The Government's proclamations and speeches are only bad copies of the Kaiser's time. The whole press resounds in protests and has started a campaign of incitement against the Allies couched in violent language. It is agitating for refusal to sign the treaty, and to what use? All must know that the Allies, by keeping up the blockade and occupying the coal districts, can force Germany to sign whatever they want.

The Allies have been threatened that
But
Germany would join the Bolsheviki.
that would be suicidal. The only way to

rescue the country is by openness and honesty. The revolution has been a great disappointment.

Germany should have sent men who would have laid their cards on the table and got the Allies to understand that some of the conditions were unacceptable. If Germany showed its good-will to do what is in its power to comply with the Allies' requests the Allies would see that conditions were changed in favor of Germany, because they know there must be a Germany and that it is impossible to destroy the German people.

ARTICLE IN VORWAERTS

An utterance which created a sensation throughout Berlin, especially in political circles, was published in the Vorwärts on May 10, from the pen of Friedrich Stampfer, the editor, just returned from Versailles. Herr Stampfer said:

I have come from Versailles, where we sought for peace and found war. I have come from Versailles in order to cry in the ears of sleepers that it is still war. You may slay the bringer of bad tidings, but that will not alter the frightful fact that though weaponless we are still at

war.

True peace between civilized peoples can only be attained by negotiation. Our opponents will not negotiate, and therefore it is a lie when they assert that they wish peace. The indescribable instrument of pressure which they present to us is no instrument of peace, but an expression of their pitiless determination to continue, by other means, their war of extermination against the German people.

It would therefore be lunacy to believe that peace would be brought about by putting six German names on one piece

of paper. Even after the signing of this so-called peace treaty, the world war would not be at an end. If we sign, we merely stand before another stage of world struggle. In place of thundering annihilation there would be clandestine destruction which would last for generations, and after an age of despair we should still look in vain for the hour of delivery.

If we do not sign, then we have before us a short struggle which would bring either destruction or salvation. *

The enemy will attempt to occupy parts of Germany and to force the rest to surrender by hunger. We must force him to make a complete job of it. The enemy must himself be compelled to occupy all of Germany and to make her a colony of his so-called League of Nations.

We shall then see how long his inner and outer unity prevails, and if it lasts for years we must not weaken. We have

before us the heroic example of little Belgium, which in similar circumstances held out for four years. What Belgium could do we must do.

66

OFFICIAL OPINION

Germany has seized and unfurled a new banner on which are inscribed President Wilson's Fourteen Points, which the President apparently has deserted," said Friedrich Ebert, the German President, in a statement to The Associated Press on May 11. President Ebert called the Peace Treaty a "monstrous document." He declared that history held no precedent for such determination to annihilate completely vanquished peoples. President Ebert declared that the world's youngest republic in the hour of gravest peril had weighed its overseas big brother (America) and found him wanting.

President Fehrenbach at a meeting of the Peace Committee of the German National Assembly on May 9 declared that the terms were more drastic than the most pessimistic forecasts had anticipated, and said that the treaty, which meant the enslavement of the German people, was dictated by hate.

Prince Lichnowsky, the former German Ambassador at London, said to a correspondent of Le Temps on May 11:

I

described the peace treaty as a

Ger

be

dreadful" document. He said that it would make an enormous jail of Germany, in which 60,000,000 persons would have to labor for the victors in the war. man trade, he asserted, would strangled should the terms be accepted. He criticised President Wilson, and said that the President by his attitude had deceived the hopes of the German people. He continued:

APPEALS FOR NATIONAL UNITY

I know that I am one in heart with you in the gravity and sanctity of this hour, which should be ruled by only one idea, that we belong to one another and must stand by one another and that we are one flesh and one blood and that whoever tries to sever us is driving a murderous knife into the living body of the German people.

nation alive that and To keep our nothing else is our duty. We are pursuing no nationalistic dreams. No questions of prestige and no thirst for power have Bare life is a part in our deliberations. what we must have for our land and nation today while every one feels a throttling hand at his throat.

Let me speak without tactical considerations. The thing which is at the basis of our discussion is this thick volume in Germany rewhich 100 sentences begin: This dreadful and murderous nounces." volume by which confession of our own unworthiness, our consent to pitiless disruption, our agreement to helotry and slavery, are to be extorted-this book must not become the future code of law.

of

The world has once again lost an illusion. The nations have in this period, which is so poor in ideals, again lost a of thousands belief. What name on in thousands bloody battlefields, trenches, in orphan families, and among the despairing and abandoned has been mentioned during these four years with more devotion and belief than the name of Wilson?

Today the picture of the peace bringer as the world pictured him is paling beside the dark forms of our jailers, to one of whom, Premier Clemenceau, a Frenchman recently wrote: "The wild beast has been put in a cage on bread and water, but is allowed to keep his teeth, while his claws are hardly cut."

ALL GERMANY IN CAPTIVITY

All over Berlin we see posters intended to arouse a practical love for our brothers in captivity. They show sad and hopeless faces behind the prison bars-that is the right frontispiece for the so-called

Peace Treaty, a true portrait of Germany's future.

Sixty millions are behind the barbed wire and the prison bars-sixty millions at hard labor, for whom the enemy makes their own land a prison camp. Should the peace conditions be accepted Germany no longer could call anything her own which lies outside these narrow bounds. Germany has ceased to exist abroad, but if that were not sufficient, her cables have been taken from her and her wireless stations can send only commercial telegrams, and then only under control of the Allies. This would separate us from the outer world, for what business can be done under the control of competitors need not be described.

Silesian

I ask you what honest man will say that Germany can accept such conditions. At the same time as we shall have to bestir to ourselves perform forced labor for the benefit of the entire world, our foreign trade, the sole source of our welfare, is destroyed and our home trade is rendered impossible. Lorraine iron ore, Upper coal, Alsatian potash, the Sarre Valley mines, and the cheap foodstuffs from Posen and West Prussia are to lie outside our frontiers. We are to impose no higher tariff or protection than existed on Aug. 1, 1914, while our mies may do as much as they like at every point in strangling us at home. All German revenues must be held at our enemies for paythe disposal of ments, not for war invalids and widows -all as forced labor for products the prices of which will be fixed by our customers.

*

ene

We protest against hatred being perpetuated, a curse being established for all eternity. Members of the National Assembly, the dignity of humanity is placed in your hands. Preserve it.

PROCLAMATION BY EBERT

A proclamation to the German people issued in Berlin by President Ebert on May 9 read as follows:

The first reply of the Allies to the sincere desire for peace on the part of our starving people was the laying down of the uncommonly hard armistice conditions. The German people, having laid down their arms, honestly observed all the obligations of the armistice, hard as they were.

Notwithstanding this, our opponents for six months have continued the war by maintaining the blockade. The German people bore all these burdens, trusting in the promise given by the Allies in their note of Nov. 5, that the peace would be a peace of right on the basis of President Wilson's fourteen points."

"

Instead of that, the Allies have now given us peace terms which are in contradiction to the promise given. It is unbearable for the German people and is impracticable, even if we put forth all our powers. Violence without measure would be done to the German people.

From such an imposed peace fresh hatred would be bound to arise between the nations, and in the course of history there would be new wars. The world would be obliged to bury every hope of a League of Nations, liberating and healing the nations and insuring peace.

The dismemberment and mangling of the German Nation, the delivering of German labor to foreign capitalism for the indignity of wage slavery, and the permanent fettering of the young German republic by the Entente's imperialism is the aim of this peace of violence. The German people's Government will answer the peace proposal of violence with a proposal of a peace of right on the basis of a lasting peace of the nations.

The fact that all circles of the German people have been moved so deeply testifies that the German Government is giving expression to the united will of the German Nation. The German Government will put forth every effort to secure for the German people the same national unity and independence and the

same freedom of labor in economic and cultural respects which the Allies want to give to all the peoples of Europe, save only our people.

Our nation must save itself by its own action. In view of this danger of destruction, the German Nation and the Government which it chose must stand by each other, knowing no parties.

Let Germany unite in a single will to preserve German nationality and liberties. Every thought and the entire will of the nation ought now to be turned to labor for the preservation and reconstruction of our fatherland. The Government appeals to all Germans in this hard hour to preserve with it mutual trust in the path of duty and in the belief in the triumph of reason and of right.

UNIVERSAL PROTEST

Mass demonstrations organized by the National People's Party to protest against the signing of the treaty were held in Berlin, Breslau, Danzig, Königsberg, Cassel, Bochum, and other places. Waves of protest and remonstrance surged over all Germany, filled with expressions of anger, bitterness and disappointment. A telegram from Silesia protested vehemently against the cession of Upper Silesia to the Poles. The newspapers were swamped with protests, and the Government was overwhelmed with telegrams from all parts of the country. The expression "A sentence of death 19 was one frequently employed.

Cardinal Hartmann, Archbishop of Cologne, requested Pope Benedict to intervene in the situation between the allied powers and Germany in order to protect Germany from the complete breakdown which menaced her. In his appeal the Cardinal asserted that the peace conditions would mean the utter ruin of Germany, and would be a cruel violation of the rights of 70,000,000 inhabitants of the country.

N official rummary of the bounda

A

ries of Germany as they were defined and circumscribed by the terms of the Peace Treaty was published in Paris on May 7. This summary reads as follows:

The new boundaries of Germany may be described approximately as follows:

(1) Present boundary with Holland. (2) With Belgium, east of neutral Moresnet and along the eastern boundary of Kreise, of Eupen and Malmédy.

(3) The present frontier with Luxemburg.

(4) The frontier with France of 1870, i. e., the eastern boundary of AlsaceLorraine, with reservations as regards the Sarre Basin.

(5) The present frontier of Switzerland. (6) Frontier of 1914 with Austria to the angle east of Neustadt.

(7) The new frontier with Poland runs thence northward, passing west of Oppeln to the most southerly point of Posnania,

(Posen,) thence to the western boundary of Posnania to the River Bartsch; thence from the River Bartsch to a point about ten miles east of Glogau; thence from the boundary of Posnania northeast to southwest of Lissa; thence northeast to west of Kopnitz, (forty-five miles southwest of Posen.)

Thence the line will run north along the line of lakes and crossing the River Warthe to meet the boundary of Posnɛnia eight miles west-northwest of Birnbaum; thence east-northeast to the River Netze; thence up the River Netze to the bend eight miles southwest of Schneidemuhl; thence west of Schneidemuhl; thence northeast about five miles west of the Schneidemuhl-Konitz Railway, and passing east of Schlochau to a point about three miles northwest of Kopnitz.

Thence it will run north to the old boundary of West Prussia, which it follows to a salient five miles southeast of Lauterburg; thence north to meet the Baltic about eight miles west of the old boundary of West Prussia.