toward peace. The temper of all the participants in this struggle is not a thing to be lightly trifled with.

But there is a bigger question than whether, and, if so, how and when, the United States will initiate negotiations for ending hostilities. There is a bigger question even than the still undetermined one, whether the United States will enter the war. That bigger question is, whether the United States will enter the world. There have been intimations, both specific and authoritative, that she will; that she recognizes that the days of seclusion are over, and that in the future she means to play her part as a working member of the family of nations. But Englishmen have hesitated to accept these intimations at their face-value. They have hesitated, first, because the impression of infirmity and instability of purpose wrought by American diplomacy during the past few years has not yet even begun to wear away; secondly, because they do not know what amount of popular backing, if any, these intimations command. At present they are no more than the dicta of a president. They will have to be the settled resolve and policy of a nation before they can be accepted as a permanent factor in the new scheme of Weltpolitik.

Do Americans realize the conditions on which alone their utility in the future ordering of the universe can be assured? It cannot be assured unless they for their part get rid of certain inveterate prepossessions, readjust their political focus, and accept responsibilities they have hitherto and deliberately declined to assume. However slight or however onerous the task of maintaining a lasting peace may hereafter prove, Americans can take no effective hand in it so long as they confine themselves to expressions of goodwill and pacific protestations, and, for the rest, wash their hands of Europe. If the United

States is to exert a genuine and firsthand influence in safeguarding and fortifying the peace of the world, there must be no more half-heartedness in American policy, no attempt to achieve by persuasion and exhortation what can be achieved only by force, no throwing out of suggestions accompanied by a refusal to guarantee their performance, but a resolute and definite entrance into the actual arena of worldpolitics and a willingness to undertake the inevitable commitments and run the inevitable risks.

If that is, indeed, the direction in which American statesmanship is tending, then it will be welcomed by no one more eagerly and more sincerely than by the people of the British Empire. It is what we have always hoped for. We have hoped for it because we know that, when America ceases to be a recluse among the nations, when she decides to coöperate on equal terms with the nationals and governments of other countries, to shoulder her part of the common liabilities and to contribute her due proportion of naval and military power to the general stock, no question is likely to separate, and a hundred questions are likely to bind together, the British and the American peoples. And it is on the close understanding of these two powerful, democratic and unaggressive peoples that the well-being of humanity, the security of whatever dispensation is evolved from the turmoil of this war, and the best hope of a durable peace, must chiefly depend. We in Great Britain stand ready to work with any nation to prevent a recurrence of the awful cataclysm now pulverizing Europe and detonating throughout the entire world. But we would rather work with the American nation than with any other - if, but only if, America shall at length make up her mind to be judged, not by her aspirations or her protestations, but by her deeds.

THE following observations upon the course which the inner development of Germany is likely to take when peace has been restored are not mere daydreams. They are based upon the concrete evidence of popular movements and public discussions now going on in Germany. The fundamental thought running through all these discussions is: The war has given us a new Germany; let us see to it that this new Germany be brought to its full realization in the days to come.

I

Whatever one's view may be about the underlying causes of the war, only ignorance or hatred can deny that the German people, in waging it, have presented a spectacle of consummate devotion and self-surrender. At its very outbreak, all petty class prejudices, all sectional jealousies, all sectarian rivalry, all industrial antagonisms seemed to be swept away. In a supreme moment the whole nation actually felt itself as one, ready to sacrifice everything for the maintenance of its common ideals.

The most striking manifestation of this suddenly awakened new national consciousness was the well-known declaration of the Socialist party in the Reichstag on August 4, 1914, that it would vote unanimously for the warcredit asked for by the Government. Less well known, but probably still more significant, is the part taken in the war organization by the Socialist

trade-unions throughout the Empire. The trade-unions had had in the months before the war particularly galling evidence of governmental ill-will; repeated efforts had been made to stamp them as political organizations and thereby place them under stricter police surveillance. They had fully made up their minds that with the declaration of martial law at the beginning of the war they would be dissolved. But instead of dissolving them, the Government, immediately after the granting of the warcredit, turned to the trade-unions for help and coöperation, and the unions, without a moment's hesitation, placed themselves at the service of the Government. They passed a vote that, during the war, contributions to strike funds be stopped, which was tantamount to the discontinuance of strikes during the war. They utilized their employment agencies for furnishing laborers for the gathering of the harvest, so vital to the national sustenance. They turned their coöperative societies - huge organizations which in the years before the war had been strictly confined to party membership - into centres for the distribution of food among the whole population. Persistently and methodically they employed their powerful and widely diffused party press to inspire their members, both at home and in the field, with the imperative necessity of standing together with the other parties in this crucial hour. In close collaboration with the government authorities, they worked out constructive plans for the care of the dependents of the men in the

field and for the employment of soldiers who had returned disabled.

In short, there is no doubt that the magnificent subordination of all individual forces to the one great need of the Fatherland, which has enabled Germany to withstand victoriously the onset of nearly the whole world, including the supplying of enormous quantities of ammunition and other war material to her enemies by neutral America there is no doubt that this wonderful economic mobilization for national defense rests to a large extent upon the vast system of Socialist party organizations, voluntarily and unstintedly devoting themselves to the common cause. It is needless to add that all the other parties and classes have not remained behind the German workmen in this self-sacrificing devotion.

What is the outlook which this extraordinary exhibition of a common national will opens up for Germany's future? This is the main question which I shall try to answer. In doing so, I take it for granted that the war will not end with Germany's political and economic destruction. For even if, as seems happily improbable, the German arms should finally be overwhelmed by numbers and money, the German spirit will remain, and will press on toward the working out of national conditions worthy of a people that has stood so marvelously this unparalleled test of public efficiency and virtue.

It is not to be supposed that after the war German public life will be held together by the same undivided concentration of purpose that now dominates everything. The old party struggles will reawaken, the old class interests will reassert themselves, perhaps more vigorously than before. For it is certain that the millions who have fought this war will return from the years in trenches and submarines and aeroplanes with a heightened sense of the

rights of citizenship, and of what is the people's due. On the other hand, every war successful or otherwise - has a tendency to increase the demands of the advocates of militarism and of class rule. Serious clashes of opinion, therefore, between liberals and conservatives, progressives and reactionaries, socialists and capitalists, appear inevitable in the near future. What may confidently be hoped for is that this party struggle of the future will not have the same virulence and bitterness that it so often had in the Germany before the war; that, on the contrary, all parties will recognize one another as fellow servants of a common cause, differing from each other only in ways and means, not in ultimate aims and ideals, and therefore mutually inclined to reasonable compromises.

Perhaps the most hopeful augury of the future is that even now, in the midst of the war and in the joyous consciousness of the undivided allegiance of the whole people to its supreme task, the best men of all parties clearly recognize that, if a new and better Germany is to arise from the fearful cataclysm of these days, there is need of unsparing self-scrutiny on all sides and of unshrinking determination to make the noble enthusiasm of the moment a permanent power for reform and readjustment of the very foundations of German life. I may be permitted to say that a recent letter from a friend of mine gives me the assurance if such assurance were needed - that no one in Germany feels this more deeply and earnestly than the man who in this war has been to all his subjects a shining example of real greatness of character, William II. My friend had spent an evening alone with the Emperor at the front, and he writes that all evening the Emperor talked, ardently and full of hope, of the reconstructed, ennobled, spiritualized Germany of the future.

II

Probably no German institution seems so little in need of improvement as the German army. That the army is a truly popular institution and not something foisted upon the people by autocratic caprice, was once more demonstrated, and with particular emphasis, when in August, 1914, two million volunteers offered themselves for service by the side of the regular reserves and the men then under the colors. The army is, indeed, one of the principal training-schools of national manhood and public devotion, and a living demonstration of the equality of all classes before the fundamental demand of the country's self-preservation. It will remain so. For, unfortunately, there is little hope that after the war there will be less need of military preparedness. On the contrary, whatever may be the outcome of the present conflict, it will leave for many years to come such a vast accumulation of hatred, jealousy, and mutual fear among all European nations that any grouping of powers for the maintenance of peace will have to rely on the full military strength of each of its members. Germany, in particular, as the main butt of all these fears and hatreds, will agree to a reduction of armament only if she receives adequate pledges that disarmament will not be used as a weapon to cripple her permanently. And it is hard to see how such pledges can be given.

Under these circumstances, all that a German patriot and a friend of peace can hope for is that the army will become in a still fuller measure of reality what in principle it is now: the people in arms. Whether a complete reorganization after the pattern of the Swiss militia system - such as the Socialists have for years been advocating-would be compatible with fullest efficiency, is

a question I do not feel competent to answer. But that the reform must and will be in the direction of greater democratization of the army, cannot reasonably be doubted. Let us frankly admit it: in the Germany before the war there was too wide a gap between the soldier, particularly the officer, and the civilian. The officer, particularly of the junior lieutenant grade, had come to look upon himself as a sacrosanct being whose social status must be kept inviolate from contact with ordinary mortals. The exclusive jurisdiction of military courts in cases involving both civilians and soldiers had led to flagrant miscarriages of justice and striking infringements upon civil rights. The virtual exclusion of Jews and of any person suspected of Socialism, or even of Radicalism, from holding officers' commissions could not fail to arouse widespread indignation among right-minded people and to estrange them from a system that tolerated such intolerance.

All these evils have been swept aside by the comradeship' of the war. And they will not be allowed to return after the war. Legislative steps will be taken to make their return impossible. The future German army will have room for any capable officer of whatever racial extraction and of whatever political creed. And the whole army will feel itself, not apart from the civilian population or superior to it, but identical with it and serving on the same level with any other organized body of public utility or public production.

III

The second change of vital importance which is likely to be brought about by this war affects the relation between government and parliament. Much has been written about the supposed ineffectiveness of the parliamen

tary system in Germany, often without due consideration of what has actually been achieved by this system. It seems to me undeniable that the German system of a government standing above a great variety of parties and working through constantly shifting compromises with all the parties, has on the whole been very effective. It has, on the one hand, secured continuity and sustained vision of governmental policy, and on the other hand it has forced the government to steer a middle course between the conflicting interests of the different parties, thereby doing its part toward the harmonizing of these conflicts and the giving 'to each his

own.'

But thus far, the final conclusion from this method of non-partisan government has not been drawn: the conclusion that all the great parliamentary parties, including the Socialist party, must be represented in the ministry. This inevitable demand for a genuine coalition ministry will, I am confident, be fulfilled after the war. It will not do to exclude from a seat in the ministry a party which in the moment of supreme national need has demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt its unswerving loyalty to the country— which indeed, considering its numerical strength, its unmatched organization, and its hold upon the most intelligent part of the large masses, may be said to have saved Germany in the most portentous hour of her history. This assumption by a Socialist party leader of a seat in the government, by the side of representatives of the Conservative, Liberal, and Centrist parties, will be the crowning symbol of that complete unity into which Germany has been welded by the war; it will be a tacit acknowledgment that the Socialists have accepted the monarchy; it will rob German parliamentary life of the fierce and unprofitable party passion

which has embittered it so often in the past.

And with this there will come a revision of the electoral laws and regulations, with regard both to the Reichstag and to the legislatures of the individual states. As to the Reichstag, the long-deferred redistribution of electoral districts, taking at last into account the enormous growth of the city population, so inadequately represented on the basis of the present distribution, has become an imperative necessity, and will surely be instituted as soon as peace has come. As is well known, the suffrage for most of the state legislatures is different from that for the Reichstag. Whereas the Reichstag is elected on the basis of universal manhood suffrage, the suffrage for most of the state legislatures, particularly the two most important ones, the Prussian and the Saxon, is hemmed in by unreasonable and obsolete property gradations and restrictions. As a matter of fact, the legislative record of these state legislatures, based upon a restricted suffrage, has not been so markedly inferior to that of the Reichstag, based upon universal suffrage, as one would suppose. It has not been dominated by the desire for class monopoly; it has been freer than many American state legislatures from the insidious influences of selfish interests; it has on the whole stood for public welfare and popular improvement. Nevertheless, the anomalous difference between the constitutional make-up of these legislatures and that of the Reichstag is irritating and harmful. The necessity of reform has been openly acknowledged on all sides. In Prussia, a reform bill was introduced by the Government some years ago, but was defeated by the Conservatives. There is no doubt that after the war this reform will be undertaken anew, and that it will not be defeated this time.