The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-11
Copyright, 1923. Carpenters World
 Travels.

Copyright, 1923. Carpenters World
 Travels.
 BERLIN, Germany.-I have come to Germany to describe the actual conditions which have swept over the land beginning with the fall of the mark and increased by the talk ing over of the Ruhr by the French, engulfing the people in maelstrom of destruction. 1 have crossed the country from the North sea to Po- land. have gone down into the Ruhr valley and inspected the great manu- featuring plants and the mines, and spent some time in the cities talking with all sorts and conditions of men from laborers in the factories to bankers and the highest officials. l am now in Berlin, but I expect to move back and forth and write just what I see. So far, I have no fixed conclusions. My head Is buzzing with the complications and contradictions I find everywhere, and I get new view every hour. One day I am con vinced that the captains of industry, bankers, socialists, and others who are running the republic, are tht shrewdest rascals who have ever trodden the pike of the nations and that they are fooling the world. The next day I feel they are compara- lively honest and want to do all they can to get Germany back on her feet. And then something new turns these premises up side down, and as the backwoods congressman said. T don't know where l am at."
 All shall do in these letters is to describe what I see ana hear from day to day, whether 1t be in favor of Germany or not, and let the man on the street draw his conclusions. 1 am not prophet nor the son of prophet and I shall not predict. Ex- pressions of opinion l shall leave to the editorial columns. making de- scriptions without fear or favor only of those things which come under my eyes.
 There is one truth, however. that stands out like a boil on ones nose and this is that these Germans are in a terrible condition. A very few of the people may be making money, but tens of millions have lost every cent of their savings, millions have not enough to buy scrap of new clothing, and hundreds of thousands in every district are practically on the edge of starvation.
 c Q <r
 Is It Retributive Justicef
 If Germany is, as most. of us be- lieve, guilty of having originated the greatest war of all time, and of over turning the financial and economic world, she is paying the price to the uttermost. Her condition, past and present, as l see 1t now, Is nowhere better described than in the 26th, 27th and 2Sth chapters of the Proph- ct Ezekiel. where he shows the glory of ancient Tyre and predicts the fate which came upon 1t. That prophecy describes the pride and predomi- nance of the Germany of the past and the ashes of despair in which she is sitting at present. I commend it to all Bible readers.
 A Forty Years View.
 But let us get down to brass tacks and see if we can figure out just what Germany is in these days after the war. I have known her off and on for the past 40 years.s I came here first upon leaving college when old Kaiser Wilhelm was still on the throne. 1 saw that famous monarch at Ems and shouted with the rest in his honor. l was here again in 1889, when 1 made honeymoon trip around the world and crossed Ger many from one end to the other. l visited Berlin again in 1892 when the young kaiser, the man who now 30 years later in the seclusion of Doorn is spreading the salve of his second honeymoon on the wounds he re- ceived in the World war, had just dismissed Bismarck and was running the show for himself
 Prince Bismarck had retired to his private estate at Friedrichruh. near Hamburg. I had the honor of him there and talking with him on his seventy-seventh birthday, and a few day later saw the boy Kaiser review the great German Army at Tempelhofer Field, near Berlin. He may have had visions of world conquest at that time. It was in 1902 that I came back again to find the country in the hands of a military aristocracy built up by the Emperor in which every one had to step aside for the soldier and of ficer, and it was not safe to laugh aloud at the Kaiser for fear of go- ing to prison. l then had my son with me and wrote up the American invasion, going through tEe factories and studying the indus tries of the people from one end of the country to the other. Among ether establishments l visited that of the KrLpps, which was making cannon and munitions. preparing as it were, for the war of a dozen years later.
 Nine more years elapsed and on the edge of 1911 I found myself with my wife and daughter at great music festival in Munich, from where we went up the Rhine and travelled about here and there. At that time the military forces were even more in evidence, and had been a modern Daniel I might have