restoration of normal intercourse between all peoples. There must even be a higher order of mutual service between them.

Prosperity anywhere in these circumstances will promote prosperity everywhere. If what we want is more selling power, clearly we must want the markets at which we aim to have more buying power. The more any great country recovers from the economic effects of the war, the more every other country will recover. If the economic factor is paramount, as we have shown it to be, in view of the universal weight of debts and burdens, what is required far more than ever before in the world's history is

The Observer

not a merely punitive and coercive peace depressing, and, therefore, impoverishing yet more and more precarious. The imperative necessity is a coöperative and creative peace working to eliminate war by the organization of common interests between peoples in a way that would stimulate all human activity and exchange, and raise human welfare to a higher plane than was ever reached before. That is the way to recover from the war. The other way barrenness and disappointment lie. How the better purpose may be attained by a consultative and cooperative system on the economic side of the League of Nations we shall show better at another time.

In the peace conditions proposed by the Entente the right of self-determination by the resident population is grossly disregarded in connection with all the territories whose status is likely to be affected. In case of the parts of Upper Silesia, Poses, and West Prussia west of the Vistula assigned to the Poles, and of the free city of Danzig and the Memel territory placed under the control of the Allies and associated Powers, and of the portion of Silesia promised to the Czechs, and of Alsace-Lorraine, the people are not permitted to vote upon their national preferences. The few cases where a popular vote is allowed constitute, upon closer examination, an insult to the principle of self-determi

nation rather than a recognition of that principle.

In case of the district of Eupen and Malmedy, which are to go to Belgium, the inhabitants are entitled to register formally their political wishes within six months of the date when the treaty goes into force. This registration occurs before the Belgian authorities. The Belgian Government is to report the result of this inquiry to the League of Nations, which then will decide what is to be done. Accordingly, we had a public vote with the name of every voter recorded, subject to the pleasure of the local Belgian administration and without any guaranty that the result of this sort of ‘an expression of popular will' is to have

any practical result. In case of the Saar basin, which is to be placed under the administration of a commission of the League of Nations, together with some bordering territories of the Palatinate, the people are to be allowed the privilege of expressing their political wishes fifteen years later and the question is to be put in three forms: continuation of the League of Nations government, union with France, or return to Germany. This vote most miraculously is to be 'free, secret, and honest,' according to the provisions arranged by the League. The calculation is that the people will be sufficiently intimidated and docile by that date to obey any instructions given them. But even in this instance the League of Nations is to be free to determine whether it approves the result of the election or not. With all these limitations the vote has no significance if Germany should not be able, fifteen years later, to buy back the coal mines of the Saar district. Should it fail to do this the territory is to be ceded definitely to France. In other words, the wishes of the people are to have no effect. The population is treated like a herd of cattle.

For the territory of East Prussia and for the West Prussian districts east of the Nogat and the Vistula, which are given to Poland, there is to be a vote by townships. It is to be controlled by an international commission, appointed by the Allies and associated Powers, who are instructed to make the election free, just, and secret. The Great Powers are then to draw the boundaries, taking into consideration the wishes of the people, and also the geographical and economic factors. But in all cases the Poles are to have complete control of the Vistula, together with a sufficient zone along the right bank of the river. The hostile Powers are, therefore, in

sole charge of the election, and assume to be an impartial judge between the Poles and the Germans. How much confidence can we have in the results?

In the case of Schleswig, the German troops and the German Government officials are to withdraw from the country. Thereupon, a free, just, and secret vote is to be taken under the control of a commission of five members, of which three are to be appointed by the hostile Powers and one each by Norway and Sweden. The land is divided into three zones. In the northern zone, which has a preponderantly Danish population, the total vote is to decide. This deprives local communities in the southern portion of the zone, who would prefer to belong to Germany, from avoiding incorporation with Denmark. In the central zone, where the Danish population is too weakly represented, and in the southern zone, where the population is entirely German, the election occurs by townships. It may, therefore, occur that overwhelming majorities in these districts are in favor of remaining in Germany, but that some townships, possibly influenced by economic and geographical conditions, will vote to join Denmark. The vote is not to occur simultaneously, but at prescribed intervals, first in the northern zone, then in the central zone, and finally in the southern zone. There is a clear intent of prejudicing the election in the southern zone by the result in the northern zone. This is playing fast and loose with the principle of self-determination. After the results of the elections have been obtained the boundaries are to be drawn, taking into consideration economic and geographical conditions. The Allies and associated Powers will prescribe the Danish boundary and an international commission of seven members, five of whom will represent the hostile gov

ernments and one each Germany and Denmark, will actually draw the physical boundary line. Again we have the hostile Powers assuming the function of an impartial judge in a case affecting Germany and opposing interests.

The worst feature is, however, that German people in districts inhabited exclusively by Germans are called upon to vote upon their future political allegiance and at the same time may derive a great economic advantage by a change of government. The inhabitants of the districts that are separated from Germany will be obligated to pay their share of the German imperial and federal state debts as they existed on the first of August, 1914, and nothing else. Accordingly, they are freed from the great burden of our war debt, to say nothing of the frightful obligations which the peace treaty may lay upon Germany, and they are presented with the hope of being subject to the relatively light taxation of the country which they are invited to join. In case of Alsace-Lorraine, following the precedent of 1871, no debts whatever are assumed. The territories allotted to Poiand assume only the old government obligations, less the sums which are to be derived from the German colonization fund. It looks as though the Saar basin, as well as Alsace-Lorraine, were to be freed from German imperial and Prussian state debts, since there is a provision that the taxes shall be only those necessary to pay the expenses of the administration of the district while under the control of the League of Nations, and consequently nothing is provided for national purposes. The treaty is eloquently silent as to what would occur

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fifteen years later when the question of ultimate separation from Germany is decided.

To submit the question of political allegiance to unquestioned German population in Eastern and Western Prussia, in Schleswig, in the Rhine country, Eupen and Malmedy, and in the Saar basin and the Palatinate, under the conditions that we here describe, constitutes nothing else than an attempt to purchase their repudiation of their own nationality by material advantages and to tempt them to high treason. The immorality of such proceedings crowns the insult which this treaty constitutes to the principle of self-determination.

The unscrupulous way in which the principle of the self-determination of nations is perverted in these peace conditions is only exceeded by the short-sightedness of the course taken. It is, of course, certain that wherever Germans, against their will and without an opportunity to express their opinions, are torn away from Germany and incorporated in a foreign nation, they will create a German irredenta. Such a worthless system of voting as is prescribed for other sections of the population does not afford the slightest guaranty against a similar irredenta sentiment among these also. Such a treatment of the whole question is not designed to reëstablish peace in Europe, but is maliciously calculated to make the present peace conditions the direct occasion for new wars. An unbridgeable gulf yawns between the peace conditions of the Entente and Wilson's peace programme at this point, as well as in many other points. Any man who seeks permanent peace must repudiate these conditions.

MR. LLOYD GEORGE went to Paris bent upon 'hanging the Kaiser' (this is the unofficial way of referring to the business by most people when they are not sitting on commissions) because he had just snatched a victory at the polls from a public blackguarded into a thoroughly un-English temper by a press which is rapidly becoming the worst in the world. The point has been carried in Paris by dint of irrelevant appeals to the crime of 1914, and opposition has been silenced whenever it has lifted its head by violent suggestions that anyone who does not want to hang the Kaiser' condones the violation by Germany of the treaties of 1839, and is not fully alive to the enormity of the offenses of the late German Empire. And now London is to be the seat of the trial and an initial touch of absurdity has already been given to the whole process by the decision to consign our prisoner (when we get him) to the Tower, to be guarded (presumably) by Beef-eaters. The idealists, who want to begin a new era in which international treaties shall be sacred, propose to bring it about in the first instance by reviving the feefaw-fum traditions of an edifice which has become a museum of horrid mediæval antiquities.

From the broad international point of view, a worse fate is likely to overtake these proceedings than the ridicule which they seem ultimately bound to provoke. The English nation has not only a sense of humor, it has also, to a fault, a sense of chivalry, of the futility of punishment after victory, of compassion for anyone in misfortune (whether by his own fault or another's) which will speedily declare

itself when this international tribunal gets to work.

For a real explanation of the proposal to try the Kaiser, an explanation which really covers the facts, we must look back, beyond the middle ages, to the primitive tribes studied by Sir J. G. Frazer in The Golden Bough. We commend the judges who will be deputed to try the Kaiser when, as is bound to happen, they are graveled for lack of precedent, to study the primitive customs which cluster round the tradition of the scapegoat. The Kaiser is to be made with all due rites and ceremonies the scapegoat of the war. The Prussian traditions and the Prussian people were the authors of the war. William of Hohenzollern was a mere straw upon the wind. He was dangerous only in the sense that any impressionable person of histrionic ability is dangerous if he is put into the midst of powerful and mischievous political and social forces. The Allied statesmen who made the peace know this so well that they have not dared, even though William II is a discredited exile, to leave the real Prussian military régime the smallest chance of recovery, even though the new Germany has become outwardly as democratic as she safely can be. The Allied statesmen do not believe that in punishing William they are really cutting off the offense of Prussia at the root. They talk only of the moral effect of the trial. That effect will, in our opinion, be disastrous. To begin with, we doubt whether the proceedings can be conducted with any sort of dignity. The days of Westminster Hall and Warren Hastings are over. The Allies who wholly failed to make the recent

proceedings in the Hall of Mirrors dignified or impressive cannot hope to make the trial of the Kaiser anything but a fashionable spectacle. Even if they contrive to keep out the matinée hat, they will be compelled to keep in the descriptive reporter who will vulgarize every incident and describe with great particularity and his customary genius for getting things wrong every incident which strikes him as likely to appeal to the least fastidious of Lord Northcliffe's constant readers.

The practical result of the trial, in England at least, will almost certainly be twofold. A certain simple section of the public, having hung or banished the Kaiser, will consider that the quarrel between ourselves and Germany is thereby closed, and in the English fashion will be the more disposed to shake hands. A less simple section of the public, for whom hanging the Kaiser is neither here nor there, will be instinctively repelled by the whole affair and fall into a perfectly natural sympathy for Germany the victim. The worst crimes are to some extent condoned by misfortune. No surer means of raising sympathy for the new Germany could well be devised than by making a public exhibition of the calamity which has overtaken her.

The irony of the whole affair lies in making London the seat and centre of these proceedings, for in England the effect will be worse for those who are responsible than in any other European country. In assenting to such an

The Saturday Review

arrangement, Mr. Lloyd George has made a mistake to which lately he has been too prone. He has assumed that the English press speaks the English mind. It is an anomaly of the English character that the English public will support a press and often acquiesce in policies and speeches which fall habitually beneath the generosity and intelligence of the average Englishman. We should have little hope of our country if we thought that half of what is said to-day in the House of Commons or a tenth of what appears in public print had the heart and mind of England behind it. Unfortunately, the English are not by nature articulate and it has become a habit with them to leave their speaking and writing to professional speakers and writers who are usually louder and more ubiquitous in proportion as they are out of touch with the genuine and unalterable English temper. For five years the English have had to fight with brutes, but they have not been brutalized. The war has brutalized our politics and our newspapers, but the destinies of England ultimately lie in the hands of the decent and chivalrous Englishmen, still to be found in every rank of the community, who will one day find a leader and someone to speak for them upon the old English level.

Meanwhile, the vulgarians are claiming the pastimes they deserve, one of which is the game shortly to be played in London, playfully described over the dinner tables as hanging the Kaiser.