New-York tribune., 1919-12-14
and decisive success in the briefest
of campaigns.
The German Parallel

Now, looking at the German situa-
tion of the recent month it is easy to
perceive the parallels. Technically,
the army was not routed on the bat
tlefield as was the Prussian army of
Jena, it was not captured as the
French army had been at Sedan. It
had been beaten, and supreme dis
aster might have come within the
shortest conceivable time after the
moment when fighting ended had
there been no armistice, but it was
actually in line, fighting back, with
drawing in order, on November IL,
1918.
Some fraction of the prestige Of
the old German army was thus
saved. The troops returned, well
coined with triumphal arches; the
German military leaders boldly pro-
claimed that the army had not been
defeated, that the collapse of the
home front lad dragged the army
down with it. This was untrue, as in
the Napoleonic case, but it was not
obviously untrue. On the contrary,
there, was at least an appearance Of
a warrant for the military claims
But with the military surrender
came the revolutions, the local dis
orders, the transfer Of the seat of
government to Weimar, the actual
control of the government, when
semblance of order had been re-
stored by elements as foreign to the
recent German system as were the
Bourbons of century ago to the
Napoleonic. The soldiers, who had
overrun half Of Europe and at home
had been the ruling caste for at least
century, were pushed into an OBJ
scurity which was alike humiliating
and painful.
Functionaries, soldiers, all the vast
army Of the old officialdom was large
ly evicted from power, and it con-
stituted at once the foundations of
an opposition which was bound in
the nature Of things to seek always
for the overthrow of the existing
regime and the restoration of the
older system. 1t was true that the
prestige of royalty itself had been
grievously wounded by the course
of the Kaiser. There was no Ma
poleonic legend ATTACHED to the king
who had deserted his people at the
critical hour in circumstances which
were at once shameful and ridicu~
lous.
On the other hand, the system of
the past was greater than the Kaiser.
1t had at times controlled him. He
had more and more become a figure
inconsiderabIe by comparison with
Hindenburg or Ludendorff, just as
the Reichstag had ended by being
little more than debating society
whose powers, such as they were, had
passed to the Great General Staff.
At no time did the German idea
center SO completely around the
Kaiser as the Napoleonic dream had
been concentrated in the person Of
Napoleon. A restoration of the
Kaiser at most would be merely the
use of a rather damaged symbol for
something far greater, and it was by
no means certain that some symbol
might not be found.
The essential thing was--and Is
for the past tense hardly applies,
that the new regime steadily failed
to give any substitute for the old.
1t could not make real peace with
the enemy, it could not lift the
blockade. it was asked to sign the
most humiliating and onerous peace
in modern history, just from any
reasonable point of view but bound
in the nature of things to strike the
German mind as the ultimate ex-
preston of injustice, and even this
peace did not in reality end the de-
bate. The course Of events, the
acts Of certain Germans. notably
in Scapa Flow and in the Baltic
provinces, evoked new demands
from the Allies, with further sacri-
fees.