The Washington herald., 1918-07-12
The Logical Thing.

Germany hereafter is to De under fortress
government Blood and iron" has reached its
final phase. Civilian Germany has gone into a
receivership with the saber rattlers in eontrd.
The remnants of constitutional government are
. to be torn out root and branch.
There can be no mistaking the meaning Of
recent events including the naming of Won Hintze,
a creature of Won Tirpitz's, diplomat only in
terms of earieature, to be foreign minister sue
ceeding the goat Won Kuehlmann. The pam
Germans we'll may gloat over the absolutism they
have imposed upon a subject people They are
shaping the pure" military state, gradually re-
ducing to serfdom the majority Of the population
which works instead of fights.
All of this is entirely logical. The unmasking
of miitarism, the surrender Of all its deceits,
DISCUSSES and pretensions, the absorption of all
Germany in the dry blaze of imperial rule, is
good news for the world From the German
point of view it means more than Won Bern
hardfs doctrine, "world power or downfall" 1t
means destruction for the enemy destruction
for itself The militarists themselves have willed
it. They are pursuing their mad gamble into its
final phase They will yield only to the death blow
1t is true that the German people may rebel
against their masters, may turn even as the worm
turns may fight like cornered rat. But what
chance have these misguided got? Prac
tically the whole assets of the country have been
conhscated by the war-making power. The slight
est impulse towards organized revolutionary
ton will be given as short shrift the hapless
village of Louvain. Intolerance, cruelty, military
despotsm is growing like black plague in the
land. The civil populace has been combed of all
its ablc-bodied males. The people long have been
in a state of undernourishment and low vitality.
Short of starvation or OF absolute economic col
lapse, what chance has peoples revolution in
Germany got to overthrow the government?
One chance only-the spreading of revolt to the
army which for all practical purposes is chimera.
The world is confronted by the metamorphosis
OF Germany into that ideal war-making state which
Trcitsche Won Bernhard and others have preached
about for more than generation. Germany is
more than an armed camp The real Germany
today is the army, which has converted the civil
population into beast of burden. The
Junkers and the military junta who plunder-
ing the nation to continue the war they wled
have no intention of relinquishing their grip when
peace comes Having achieved despotsm they
will retreat from it If the war leaves them
, unbroken.
Is this extreme picture? Only in the sense
that the political crisis in Germany has been
carefully "camouAaged" The statesmen of the
entente are we'll aware that the issue of the German
people the German government is a dead
issue. 1t has been met and settled. The govern
ment mas sugar-coated the poison 1t has forced
down the Teutonic throat, has masked its assump-
tion of absolutism with certain amount of cum
ming. But those who know German conditions
not deceived. They know that when the Berlin
foreign Office can be impudentIy turned over to
navalist like Won Hintze the old Germany, with
its mild and formal constitutional government
is gone.
This latest phase should cause rejoicing in
every allied capital The military mind, unre-
strained in its operations is, as rule the narrow
est known to 1t generally manages to make
a speedy botch of things. 1t can be trusted to
force its whole cause into the abyss in a much
shorter time than the entente nations are count
ing upon.