' of the impossibility of escaping from their economic dependence can only secure their freedom by political conflict.' No German writer has advanced a more uncompromising claim. Germany needs raw materials, coaling stations, harbours, markets, and investment areas which she has hitherto enjoyed only by favour of the countries possessing them. This constitutes economic dependence and Notstand, and justifies war to obtain them for her own by force. Dr. Renner adds that the Notstand of one implies the Notwehr of the other.

'It is no longer a question of right but of victory and growth or defeat and decay. As certain as that peoples rise and fall ' like classes, families, and persons, is it that there are Notstand 'wars.'

The whole thing is now perfectly clear. Germany is in Notstand, the enemy countries in Notwehr; that is to say, Germany needs things in their possession and is justified in taking them by force, which they are justified in resisting. The war is one of aggression and aggrandizement on her part and of defence on theirs; the issue can be decided only by force. And her action is defended by this German Socialist on the ecomonic and juristic grounds set out above. He has come a long road round but he arrives at precisely the same point as the German military and political imperialists. There can be no illusions about the German Socialists of the majority after this. Dr. Renner drives the lesson home by devoting a section of his book to the justification of the German 'proletariate,' by which he means the Socialists. No other proletariate, he says, has been so deeply convulsed as the German; none has examined the problem of the war so openly and profoundly. It is true that none has devoted so much special pleading to it, but one would have thought that the Belgian and French had been more deeply convulsed, and they have examined the problem too, though their case is a good deal simpler. However, the Germans must be first in everything, and Dr. Renner declares that what causes the German social democracy the greatest distress at presentof which there is no sign-will redound historically to its greatest honour. Herein, too, it has been the schoolmistress ' of all other proletariates.' Of course that is the part assigned to Germany in everything by God, history, science, the shade of Marx, or whatever authority you choose to call in. It has

not deserved the attacks and suspicions of brother parties, and they will collapse as soon as the Socialists of other lands learn the events as they really happened. That means, apparently, as soon as they grasp the meaning of Notstand. The German Social Democrats, he says, have no reason to shun responsibility, and, he immediately proceeds to disclaim all responsibility on their part. They did not act on psychological grounds, he says; they neither inquired into the guilt for the war nor declared the intention of exonerating a guilty party, for they had neither time nor power to exercise a judicial function; they have neither sanctioned war in general nor this war in particular, nor any war causes whatever. Yet they did exercise a judicial function and placed the guilt first on Russia and then on Great Britain. If they did so without inquiry that does not improve their case. And they did sanction this war and its causes. They did more. They sanctioned the invasion and the treatment of Belgium and laid the responsibility on the Belgians. That is clear from the interview, related by M. Vandervelde, of Noske and Koster with Belgian Socialists, at the Maison du Peuple in Brussels, where they turned up in uniform with true German delicacy at the beginning of the war. Dr. Koster informed the Belgian comrades that it was all their fault; they had only to let the Germans pass and they would have gained numerous advantages. Besides, everyone has known for years that in case of war with France our troops must pass through 'Belgium.' The Belgians retorted that in that case the Germans had played an odious comedy when they interpellated the Government in the Reichstag about its intentions with regard to Belgium, and when they voted resolutions at the International Congress on the necessity of small States defending their independence and their territorial integrity. The amiable Dr. Koster ridiculed national honour as a bourgeois idea, waived aside international treaties, and argued that since the development of the proletariate was bound up with the economic prosperity of the country they must be on the side of their Government. He finished up by asking the Belgians if they put their neutrality above the lives of one hundred thousand men, which it would have cost the Germans to have attacked by the Vosges.*

*'La Belgique Envahie et le Socialisme Internationale.' Par Emile Vandervelde, 1917.

Dr. Renner argues that the German Social Democrats had only two questions to decide: (1) Was the war there? (2) What was to be done? The first was undeniable, and the answer to the second was that they must support the Fatherland not only negatively but positively. The other proletariates did the same. There was all-round Notstand ' at the beginning of the war.' This is the usual German and pro-German trick of pretending that all the belligerents are in the same boat. It is totally incompatible with the argument that Germany was attacked and with his own statement that Notstand on one side implies Notwehr on the other. Allround Notstand is nonsense. His answer to the charge that they might have behaved differently and voted against the war credits or abstained from voting, as Bebel and Liebknecht did in 1870, in accordance with the principles of the International, is equally disingenuous. He says they had no guarantee that French and British Socialists would do the same, and at least they sent Müller to Paris on a mission, which was more than anyone else did. And what was that mission? It was an attempt to get the French Socialists to oppose their Government on the strength of an assurance that in no case would the German Socialists vote for the war credits, which Dr. Renner argues they were bound to do, and which they promptly did, with the sole exception of Karl Liebknecht. The French Socialists suspected a trap and were justified by the result. They had reason, for German sincerity had been put to the test a few days before at the Congress of Belgian trade unions, at which Legien, representing the German Social Democratic Unions, and Jouhaux, representing the French Confédération Générale, were both present. Jouhaux asked Legien what the Germans intended to do to prevent war. Were they prepared to take any action? We are ready,

' on our side, to march at your call or to march simultaneously.' The answer was silence, which was at least more honest than Müller's attempt to throw dust in their eyes. Dr. Renner ignores this tell-tale episode. The French and Belgians are not inferior in intelligence, have no need to learn the events as they really happened' from German comrades; they know only too well.

In sum, Dr. Renner's dissertation puts the responsibility for war in a very clear light. The economic analysis proves

that aggrandizement was necessary for Germany, and the juristic argument proves that she was justified in going to war for that end. No German writer has so thoroughly argued out the case. At the same time he reveals the complete accord of the Social Democrats (exclusive of the small minority who have followed Liebknecht and broken away) with the other parties in regard to the war. To clinch the matter he repeatedly lectures the minority for their foolish and mistaken idealism. Nor does he display a less robust Germanism in regard to the other questions enumerated at the beginning of this article, except that he looks forward to the establishment of a real International in the distant and nebulous future. The questions referred to are more or less bound up with the views and arguments already discussed, and can be dealt with more briefly.

The first is the conduct of the war. It is generally shunned by German writers for obvious reasons; but they seem unconscious of its supreme importance. It is the conduct of the war far more than its inception that has gradually brought the world in arms against them by convincing the other nations one after another that it is impossible to live in friendship with such people. It is this that has hardened as well as multiplied Germany's enemies and fixed their determination to carry on the struggle to the very end, and beyond the end of military operations, if need be, rather than yield to the infamous methods employed. No accommodation with the spirit that dictates them is possible. But for this, peace would have been practicable long ago. If the Germans had fought fair and carried on war in a decent and honourable manner it would have been comparatively easy to come to terms with them. Those who say that these things always 'happen in war' are not speaking the truth. Many of them are entirely new, and their deliberate adoption as a calculated policy is unprecedented in warfare, whether civilized or barbarous. It is not a question of outrages,' as they are called, committed in the fury and intoxication of war, but the planned, systematic, calculated cruelty and bad faith, not for military but for political ends, the whole principle of Fürchterlichkeit or terrorism, and the regular practice of making agreements which are never kept or meant to be kept. General von Freytag himself says that the war on non-combatants VOL. 228. NO. 465.

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is a new thing. The official German treatment of these questions has always been to accuse the enemy of their own malpractices, except when they are the subject of boasting. So General von Freytag has the hardihood to deplore, more in sorrow than in anger, the maltreatment of prisoners-by the French and British; but he refers with complacency to air raids and submarines. The bombardment of non-military places is in itself objectionable,' but the limits of what is permissible are in this matter in many ways 'elastic.' We know what that means. Conduct which is glorious when practised by Germans becomes an outrage when practised by anyone else. He attributes the Belgian horrors entirely to the 'thoughtless adoption of franc-tireur 'methods' by the Belgians, and Dr. Renner endorses this verdict, though his own doctrine of Notwehr fully justifies the Belgians. According to this jurist, who bases his justification of the war on civil law, it appears that defence of women and children by any means is not punishable against a civilian outrager, but is punishable when used against a German soldier. But the whole theory of the Notstand war, carried on by 'blind natural force in the a-moral animal world of necessity,' obviously justifies any and every means. The Social Democrat is truly a valuable ally of the military.

As for the aims of war, they are implied in its causes already discussed. There is no essential difference between the three authors. All contemplate an enlarged and more powerful Germany. Naturally the soldier is chiefly concerned with military power, and his book is a plea for increased equipment of every kind; but he calls the war an 'economic conflict,' recognizes the economic factors, and insists on the necessity of obtaining sea-power. World-power is inconceivable 'without striving for expression of power in the world and 'consequently for sea-power.' He cites Admiral Mahan, and observes that 'in our days of world-policy and worldeconomics, the views of the famous naval writer are far more ' in accordance with actuality' (than when applied to the Napoleonic war). Dr. Naumann's Mittel-Europa' is, of course, a particular expression of Dr. Renner's enlarged economy area; but it will not suffice in itself. It will need ' an extension of its northern and southern sea-coasts' as well as colonial possessions; the other small States must