the attitude of an injured innocent, as though the Lusitania had never been sunk, as though Edith Cavell had not been done to death. If you read the speech of Herr Scheidemann, delivered before the National Assembly on the terms of pease, you might suppose that Germany, having drawn her sword in defence of universal liberty, had been most unrighteously attacked and beaten. No word of sorrow or penitence mars the fine fury of his outburst. No confession of wrong-doing interrupts the even flow of his hypocrisy. From an artistio point of view, he failed, we think, because he brought off his best effect too soon. "The world," he said, "has once again lost an illusion." Cannot you see the tear glistening in his honest, pitiful eye? "The nations have in this period, which is so poor in ideals, again lost a belief." The Germans preserve no ideals, save the ideal of sinking hospital ships. "What name, on the thousand bloody battlefields, in thousands of trenches, in orphaned families, among the despairing and abandoned, during the bloody years, has been mentioned with more devotion and belief than the name of Wilson?" Mr Wilson is not, we think, highly endowed with humour, but even he must have smiled when he read those impassioned words.

Herr Scheidemann has a short memory, or he could not have uttered his wild complaint. Belonging to a nation

whose settled policy was the enslavement of the world, he asks instant freedom and palliation for Germany. He sketches what he calls the true portrait of Germany's future: "sixty millions behind barbed wire and prison bars, sixty millions at hard labour, for whom the enemy will make their own land a prison camp." It is not the principle to which he objects, for he acquiesced in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and, had his country won the war, he would have shouted himself hoarse in applauding the terms which Germany would have imposed upon the world. What he objects to is that Germany should suffer in any way for her evil doing. She would have scourged us all with scorpions, and he would have said no word in protest. We are applying to her back the lightest of whips, and he mourns aloud.

Perhaps he thought that with a little of the cunning which comes natural to the German, he might deceive the Allies once more; perhaps he thought that, according to the old formula, the Junkers would win by their tears what they had lost by their arms. But he is unable to see that Germany must and shall be judged by the same laws which she would have imposed upon others. "Without ships-for our mercantile fleet passes into the Entente's hands-without cables, without colonies, without foreign settlements, without reciprocity and legal pro

tection, aye, even without the right of co-operating in fixing prices for goods or pharma. ceutical articles, which we have to deliver as hitherto. I ask you what honest man, I will not say what German, can accept such conditions? And, at the same time, we are to bestir ourselves to work, to perform forced labour for the whole world." We do not know what distinction Herr Scheidemann draws between "an honest man" and "a German." To us the distinction is clear enough. It is clear, also, that there are many things which the Germans will have to do without in the future. And Herr Soheidemann may console himself with the knowledge that his countrymen will not be deprived of a tithe of the profits and privileges from which we should have been debarred had he been able to speak with the voice of a conqueror.

We need not take the public speeches of German Ministers too seriously. It is their policy to make sensational protests, and to that policy they will adhere until the time comes for them to sign the peace. They are already sceptical themselves as to the wisdom of that policy. Herr Rantzau appears to regret the violence and bad manners of which he was guilty at Versailles. He has confided to 8 French journalist his belief that the Entente considers moral guar. antees 88 insufficient, and wishes to hold the means in its hands of supervising the

treaty and its carrying out without the use of great forces. But he is full of hope for the future. Having ceased to brewbeat his adversaries, he expresses a lofty faith in a regenerated Germany. "We shall kill this spirit of distrust by deeds," he boasts. "We must recognise that we have not yet had an opportunity of proving our good intentions in international negotiations. We cannot at present ask our enemies to show complete confidence in us with regard to the transformations which have been effected in Germany, but we can, and must, demand that the Entente shall give us an opportunity during the period of negotiations of giving convincing proof, by actions, of the new spirit of the new Germany." Herr Scheidemann speaks with one voice, Herr Rantzau with another, and sinee neither of them is sincere we need not waste our time in idle comparison. It is enough to admit that Herr Rantzau spoke nothing less than the truth when he said that the Entente would never be satisfied with moral guarantees alone.

Meanwhile Lord Haldane has come gallantly to Herr Scheidemann's help. There is something almost admirable in Lord Haldane's loyalty to his "spiritual home." Truly he has paid the debt of his nurture over and over again. We do not know whether he still regards the Kaiser as the embodiment of the Zeitgeist. But nothing persuades him

Bolshevism," he says with a dangerous caution. "Still the possibility is there, and is made by the burdens imposed something more than a possibility." What more could the most wildly fanatical of Germans desire to be said? Then he turns to what we can only call the argument of fear. "If seventy millions of Germans," says he, "of the racial quality of our enemies are to be left to develop their powers of peaceful penetration, neither armies nor tariffs will prevent them from succeeding hereafter, and they are not likely in that case to remain acquiescent in what they now accept." They are

not likely to remain acquiescent in any case, and because they may succeed hereafter, that is no reason why we should ensure their success to-day. For Lord Haldane the moral is that, because the Germans cannot be hampered by tariffs or armies, they should not be hampered at all. The moral for us is that, if the Germans are not hampered, the terms of the treaty are far too lenient, and that Lord Haldane himself will never be happy until he has made his spiritual home his actual home, and is permitted to preach his pernicious gospel as the President of the New German Republic.