ever from the purely domestic standpoint, it is nothing less than imperative in the interests of British friendships and prestige abroad; and so long as it remains unsettled-and quite clearly it cannot now be disposed of

The Observer, June 15

on terms that might have been feasible before the war-there is one obstacle in the way of Anglo-American fellowship which is neither trivial nor temporary, and which we alone

can remove.

1. A Defense of Ludendorff and the High Command

ALREADY on August 13, that is to say, as soon as he had received the reports regarding the inglorious 8th of August, Ludendorff summoned the Chancellor and Herr von Hintze to a conference and made them a clear statement as to the military situation. On August 14 another conference took place at which the Kaiser presided. The Chief Army Command emphasized the necessity of a speedy conclusion of peace, as we were then still strong, but must count upon the military situation becoming worse. Herr von Hintze again promised to make a move for peace. During the whole of September the Chief Army Command anxiously awaited the fruits of the Foreign Office's supposed activities.

Four weeks having elapsed without any result, Ludendorff resolved on September 28, 1918, in agreement with all the departmental heads of the Op.-Abt., to propose to the FieldMarshal that the time had come to request the government immediately to set on foot peace negotiations, and with this end in view to propose an armistice to the Entente. The FieldMarshal agreed.

On September 29, von Hintze and Count Roedern, of the Imperial Treasury, were summoned to G.H.Q., at Spa. From the statements of Ludendorff during a discussion with the Foreign Secretary, it appeared that von Hintze had drawn a very melancholy picture of the internal political situation; he described the revolution as imminent and proposed immediate reconstruction of the government.

These statements burden the then government (particularly the Foreign Office) with the heavy reproach of having during a month and a half done nothing on the way to peace at a time when the military situation was likely to become worse. This neglect would appear to be all the worse, as it was von Hintze, according to Colonel Bauer, who took such a very gloomy view of the internal political situation. Strong pressure of the Chief Army Command then led to a dramatic accentuation of the situation, to a change of Chancellor, to government reconstruction. From Colonel Bauer's statement, the members of the government appear to be men who could not come to a decision, and who had to be driven to every step. Telephonic conversations, a statement made by a General Staff Officer specially sent, and telegrams follow one another, until a short per od of grace forces them to action. Thus does Colonel Bauer interpret the telegram, which in many quarters signified a sudden cry of alarm from the Chief Army Command, but is here represented as the last link in a long chain.

Nothing was done within the time limit, as an exchange of ideas ensued between von Payer and the FieldMarshal as to the consequences of the peace offer:

Berlin, October 3, 1918. Before coming to any decision as to a peace move, I would request Your Excellency to answer the following questions:

1. How long can the army hold the enemy the other side of the German frontiers?

2. Must the Chief Army Command expect a collapse, and if so, when? Would a collapse denote the end of our military forces of resistance?

3. Is the military situation so critical that action should immediately be taken to bring about an armistice and peace?

4. In the event of your reply to question three being in the affirmative, is the Chief Army Command aware that a peace move, under pressure of the critical military situa

tion, may lead to the loss of German territory, namely, Alsace-Lorraine and the purely Polish districts of the Eastern provinces?

5. Does the Chief Army Command agree to the dispatch of the enclosed draft Note? I should be grateful to Your Excellency for an immediate reply.

(Signed) PAYER, Representative Imperial Chancellor.

At a meeting on October 3 the FieldMarshal made the following verbal reply to this communication:

1. The question cannot be answered in exactly the same form in which it is put. The holding of the front depends on many factors, among others, on the resources and ability of the enemy to continue his attacks, and on the duration of our power of resistance.

At present the German army is standing firm. It will withdraw from sectors if forced, clinging toughly to enemy soil. The duration of such withdrawals cannot be determined beforehand. But it is to be hoped that they may protect German soil until next spring.

2. Answer to question 1 applies to this question. I do not believe that there will be any general collapse. As long as valuable reserves are at hand, the yielding of the front consequent on enemy breaks through need not have such a result.

3. This question is answered by my communication of October 3 to the Imperial Chancellor.

4. Unless things should change, the Chief Army Command will take into consideration the surrender of small, Frenchspeaking portions of Alsace-Lorraine. For it there is no question of the cession of German territory in the East.

5. Draft Note was advised, but not enclosed.

Vossiche Zeitung, June 1

II. The Truth of the Matter: An
Answer to Colonel Bauer

"THAT in the case of such overwhelming disaster we look round for scape-goats, is as inevitable as our inclination to shift any blame from ourselves, and to lay it on the shoulders of others.' This sentence is taken from

one of the numerous publications written by Colonel Bauer. It provides once more the leitmotiv of the innumerable tendentious writings of the militarists, both in uniform and mufti, which have been scattered broadcast among our tortured people during the last few weeks of racking suspense. It is a severe penalty for the failure of Scheidemann's dilatory government to furnish our people with official material relating to the ultimate cause of our military and political collapse. With the same lack of scruple which we learned to know in the days of the throttling censorship, and intellectual corruption among the military politicians, the attempt is again being made to poison the minds of our people with biased and tendentious disclosures. He who has ears to hear must realize with dismay how confusion is increasing under such circumstances. It would be a crime against the future to sit still and allow these attempts to have their effect.

The threads of these efforts to mislead public opinion are in the same hands which, during the war, planned the methods of which the militaristic ideas of our whole nation were influenced. The means adopted are the same. The small circle of 'selected' journalists and busy politicians, which, under the spiritual ægis of the military press bureau, joined year in, year out, in one long panegyric of our omniscient Chief Army Command; which took good care that Ludendorff was mentioned as much, and Hindenburg as little as possible, and when political decisions were about to be made, put forth threats of Ludendorff's resignation in order to terrorize the Kaiser and his political advisers-this circle is again to the fore with its instruction classes; and it makes no difference that in the meantime some of its members have developed into supporters of the

Soviet system. Respect for the General Staff is as deeply ingrained in these individuals as in the days when it served their purpose, both for personal and for political reasons, to write to the dictation of the half-gods. But these people are doubtless acting in good faith, quite unconscious of the fact that their spiritual sponsors are endeavoring to 'shirk the blame attaching to themselves and to shift it to the shoulders of others.' One of the most active of these individuals is Colonel Bauer. Anyone who thrusts himself into the limelight of publicity must reckon on exhaustive criticism. Who is this Colonel Bauer who is endeavoring by means of his pamphlets and newspaper articles to influence public opinion in favor of the Chief Army Command? Until the outbreak of war he was not known to anyone outside the narrow limits of his profession. Ludendorff made him Chief of the Artillery Department at G.H.Q. The position, however, did not actually define his activities. He was far more than Chief of the Artillery Department and wished to be still more. Endlessly energetic and active, he increased his sphere of action. The fulfillment of the Hindenburg programme which the Finance Minister, Schiffer, described as a programme of catastrophe, was, so far as the Supreme Council was concerned, in his hands. He was the middleman between the steel industry and G.H.Q. He acted in Ludendorff's name, as the latter did not himself appear in the matter, although, by means of his henchmen, he was always in the picture far more than this political-reactionary and economically selfish group cared for. The head of the fateful political side of G.H.Q. was General von Bartenwerffer, but Ludendorff's real political adviser was Colonel Bauer, who not only kept in constant touch with Stinnes and Duis

burg, with Count Westarp and Herr Stresemann by letter and telephone, but also personally conveyed the wishes of these gentlemen to Ludendorff and vice versa. Colonel Bauer was in Berlin on the occasion of every critical Parliamentary situation, pushing his puppets into the Parliamentary arena. Herr Stresemann himself can testify best how many of his worthless prophecies were inspired by Colonel Bauer. In the days when our front was already wobbling, when the initiative had long since passed into the enemy's hands, and when on August 8 a whole German army had been heavily defeated, Ludendorff's illusions were being poured into the ears of the simple souls whom he had gradually gathered into his toils.

Ludendorff, however, owes it to Colonel Bauer that he was kept in ignorance of the real state of public feeling at home, both among the working classes and in the country generally right up to the time of the collapse. Bauer was a past master in the art of telling everyone just what they wanted to hear, and also in keeping back from G.H.Q. anything he did not wish them to know. Falkenhayn, who understood far more of politics than Ludendorff, has been reported by military men who afterwards came into power, for having surrounded himself with representatives of one side only. That reproach applies perhaps still more to Ludendorff's associates. At least he was only surrounded by creatures who withheld the truth from him, and who only reported to their master what they knew would meet with his approval. Colonel Bauer was at the head of these creatures with his boon companions, Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolai, whose expert intelligence, or rather spy service, was constantly used against his own associates, both by fair means and

foul, but was of no use when it came to gaining an approximate idea of the state of affairs in the enemy's sphere of action, either with regard to the submarine warfare, Foch's reserves, or the landing of American troops.

This Colonel Bauer, who has had his fingers in every political pie, the fall of Bethmann and Kühlmann, the deportation of Belgians for the German munition works (a deed which can never be justified at the bar of history), the Prussian franchise, and the Berlin strike of 1917, the vote for unrestricted U-boat warfare, and the agitation against the Peace Resolution of the Reichstag this man now undertakes the task, in two pamphlets and several exhaustive newspaper articles, of removing all blame from G.H.Q. and making the homeland and the temporary civil government answerable for our military collapse as well as for our political downfall. If it is possible to hush up a military mistake, he trots out the faint hearts. at home, who, influenced by the defeatist majority and that section of the press not under military influence, failed to uphold the men at the front. But in spite of his skilled dialectic, in spite of his striking aptitude for glossing over the weak spots of the military leadership, both his books are extremely illuminating to any critical reader. For they clearly reveal the military causes of our collapse, despite the author's desire to prove the exact opposite. His first book, which is issued by the Scherl publishing firm, is entitled Could We Have Avoided or Stopped the War? The first question we may set aside in a critical discussion, but Colonel Bauer treats it in an astonishingly superficial manner. By so doing he shows all that arrogance which was recognizable before the catastrophe in certain military circles regarding all political questions. The