from Belgium told Dr Stuermer that they were practically starving Belgium, and the country was only kept alive by the Relief Commission, and that they were attempting to ruin any Belgian industry which might compete with German industry by a systematic removal of machinery to Germany. The chiefs of industry named by Dr Muehlon-Stinnes and Thyssen, great coal and iron magnates in Westphalia, controlling the richest coal and iron mines in the world, in 1910 putting out eighty-six million tons of coal,-these men are now busily engaged in directing the building and future sailings of ships, ready and eager to begin the new industrial development. With France, Belgium, Italy, and Russia dereliot, and eight million tons of British shipping sent to the bottom of the sea by German submarines, such development would be extremely swift; and if Germans are allowed to come to this country without restriction, and the open door for trade accorded them, as proposed by some politicians, we should soon see the same influx of Germans as before the war, and this time they would be established for ever. We cannot repeat too often that we never knew these people as we know them now. It is said that they will not come because they will be uncomfortable, feeling that every one dislikes their presence. This is quite a mistake; they care nothing for the feelings of other people. Unfortunately they would find a large garrison of their own countrymen here, ready to receive themGermans whom, for some mysterious reason, we have not been able to get rid of, though we have been fighting for our lives with their country, and in that struggle have probably sustained many reverses owing to their presence here. Mr Davis, the Kaiser's American dentist, who attended him and great numbers of Germans in Berlin for fourteen years, has put on record his opinion of the German character. He writes: selfish individual in the world. He "The average German is the most thinks of himself and his own comfort first, last, and all the time. In civil life, just as in a state of war, the German practises the principle that Might makes Right." He considers that ninetyeight per cent of the nation— workers, socialists, aristocrats, professors, and clericals-were heartily behind the Emperor and eager for war. When, in December 1916, the Kaiser made a proposal of peace to the Allies, he admitted to Mr Davis that he never intended the Allies to accept the proposal. It was intended to deceive the socialists in the belligerent and neutral countries, and it achieved that object, for they proposed a Peace Conference at Stookholm; but the Allied Governments saw through the Kaiser's plan and refused to allow their delegates to attend. The Kaiser frequently boasted to Mr Davis that he had main tained the peace of Europe for twenty-five years. He maintained peace just long enough to complete his final preparations for the wickedest war that was ever waged. Mr Davis states that the German people, far from condemning the submarine warfare and the slaughter of innocent women and children, had only one criticism to make of it-it was not comprehensive enough! "It was absolute folly, if not crime, they said, for Germany to prescribe safety lanes for neutral vessels to use. The whole world should have been declared a war zone, that death and destruction might be dealt whenever and wherever the opportunity offered. That was the all but universal senti ment." It becomes more and mere evident that the great masses of the Germans of all classes and oreeds have been heart and soul in favour of the war, and have gloated over its worse atrocities. The evidence is before the world, and it is eonclusive, Major Corbett Smith has put the matter fairly and concisely in his book, 'The Marne and After': "It is the depravity of a whole nation, rather than the individual excesses of an army, which is responsible for these things; no national army or navy, recruited as it is from the ranks of the nation itself, could possibly be guilty of such obscenity and criminality were it not that the poison had choked their very lifeblood." If there is a chance of this nation being saved, it will not be by misplaced forgiveness of the crimes which have been perpetrated, but it will rather If in the future justice is to reign in this world, the perpetrators of the unspeakable crimes which have been going on for the past four years, and are going on to-day, must pay the penalty. From the Kaiser downwards they must be tried before a Court of the Allies; and the man who, above all others, has caused the death of millions of his fellow-creatures and the maiming and torture of millions more, should assur edly not escape the penalty of death. The decree is an old one: "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." And again: "Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses.” "The land cannot be oleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it." It is surely of the highest importance in this great orisis of the world's history, when white, yellow, and black races are coming into contact in a way they never did before, that every race should have the great lesson brought before it that deadly orimes, in men however highly placed, will not go unpunished. For the present we women must demand that Germans shall not be allowed to come to this country. Our terrible sacrifices give us the right to ask this. Our statesmen tell us that the Germans are wild beasts and brutes. We will not allow wild beasts and brutes to come and settle among us and take the places of our dead sons. We have lost a million of our best and bravest men. They have died to preserve us their mothers, their wives, their sisters-from the awful fate which has overtaken so many of the women of other nations at the hands of those merciless enemies. Shall their splendid and heroic devotion be in vain? No; we women, desolate and brokenhearted as many of us are, must do our part. It is no powerless foe that we are up against. They will be organ ised for peace as they were for war. They are dis. ciplined, sober, industrious, efficient nation, malicious and envious of every one greater than themselves, arrogant, pitiless, selfish, brutal, and unchristian, and so powerful that it has taken the combined strength of all the great nations of the world to vanquish them. a We hear even now that some of the German prisoners of war, who will of course VOL. CCIV.-NO. MCCXXXVIII. be sent back to Germany when peace is declared, are proposing to return to England as soon as opportunity offers. They have have proved competent and industrious workmen. They consider our system of agriculture imperfeot, and believe that they could make much more out of the land than we do; but we must see to it that when they return to Germany they remain there. We must not be deceived by "the childlike German smile and the calm gaze of blue eyes." These charming attributes, as Dr Muehlon points out, are the mask which a ferocious and bloodthirsty disposition can, and does, put on. We are warned from Berlin what the Germans are already thinking ('Daily Mail,' October 17, 1918): "These are hard conditions, they say; but what does it matter? We must have peace. It will take double the work to make up for what has been lost. "These words sum up what Germany is thinking. She will return to work in the firm conviction that by work she will retrieve her position. She was formidable in war; she will make herself more powerful peace by the results of hard work." in Even now a number of Germans are employed in this country in places that could be filled by British workers. When our soldiers and sailors come back, and all who have been engaged in war-work are released, if cheap German labour is allowed to flood the country, we shall have 3 C not have been won; the second power is that women are the buyers of the nation, and if German goods are forced upon us we can refuse to buy them. We can buy cane sugar from our own colonies and not their beetroot sugar. We can buy stuffs dyed with our own dyes and not their dyes. We can buy glass and toys made in our own country; and things that cannot be made in this country, our colonies, or in the countries of our brave Allies, we can do without. Courage! As Mr Lloyd George has said, "You never know what you can do until you really try, in any business." THE BENCH AND BAR OF ENGLAND. BY J. A. STRAHAN. IV. COUNSEL AND WITNESSES. It was a case in which there had been considerable swearing. Counsel was addressing the jury, and in doing so was trying to reconcile the evidence of his witnesses with some indisputable facts of the case. Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, who was the judge, grew a little impatient and intervened. "Surely, Mr Smith," he said, "the real explanation of all these contradictions and inconsistencies is” so-and-so. "If we adopt that view, my lord," replied Mr Smith, "it will no doubt explain them; but the difficulty is that to adopt it we must assume that all the witnesses on both sides have been perjuring themselves." "If that, Mr Smith, is the only difficulty," answered Lord Coleridge in his suavest style, "I do not think it is unsurmountable." given. In the year of our Lord 1285, Parliament in its wisdom enacted a statute called from its opening words the Statute De Donis Conditionalibus. The object of this Act was-as its name indicates-to ensure that the condition on which a gift was made should be observed. The gifts to which it applied were grants of land made to a man "and the heirs of his body," which is the legal way of saying to a man and his descendants. The courts had held that such a gift meant merely a gift on condition the man had descendants; and, accordingly, when children were born to the man, the condition was satisfied and he could deal as he liked with the land. The great lords objected to this interpretation The prevalence of perjury which in fact was not what in the courts is to-day the was intended-and succeeded chief impediment in the way in persuading Parliament to of a righteous administration enact that such a grant in of the law; most lawyers will future should be held to be a admit this. Most candid law- grant to the man and to his yers will go further and admit descendants; and, as such, on that the prevalence of perjury the death of the man the land in the court is partly due to must go to his descendants, the law itself. Falsehood and and on the failure of his law were long close allies, descendants must revert to This may surprise the lay the grantor. Now the King reader; but it is a histori- did not like this statute at oal and undeniable faot. I all it tended, and was inwill give just one example. tended, to preserve the power |