Reaction and revolution are reuniting as reconstruction; and this tendency appears in all regions of political activity. Thus the revolutionary Council system now seems established as a secondary representative institution supplementary to Parliament.
This development is, however, not due to maturity of political experience—as it would be in similar conditions in an Anglo-Saxon community—but merely to mortal weakness. German political vitality, owing to mediæval calamities, has always been low in modern times. Now, as a result of a four years' frenzy of war and a fifth year in a fever of revolution, German political vitality is a very flickering flame. So long as France and Great Britain continue to enforce the principles and procedures of the Treaty of Versailles and of the Paris Council, Germany will remain a danger to Europe—a danger, not because of its recent relapse into a Conservative reaction, nor even because of the decreasing risk of a Communist "second" revolution, but because Germany is an essential and vital member of our European body politic that is being kept in a morbid, even moribund, condition by the provisions of the peace. The Paris diplomatists have not yet learnt the lesson taught by a great French diplomatist two hundred years ago at the time of the last great European settlement but one. M. de Callières then wrote in his treatise on diplomacy—"We must think of the States of which Europe is composed as being joined ... in such a way that they may be regarded as members of one Republic, and that no considerable change can take place in any one of them without affecting the condition or disturbing the peace of all the others."
A majority of the rank and file of Greater Britain does so think of Germany to-day, but unless and until it can compel its rulers to act accordingly it will not get peace. Peace is only for men of good will.
Christmas, 1919.
65, Strand on the Green,
Chiswick.
CONTENTS
| [CHAPTER I] | |
| PAGE | |
| THE REVOLUTION | 1 |
| [CHAPTER II] | |
| THE REACTION | 26 |
| [CHAPTER III] | |
| THE COUNCIL REPUBLICS | 63 |
| [CHAPTER IV] | |
| RUIN AND RECONSTRUCTION | 120 |
| [CHAPTER V] | |
| COUNCIL GOVERNMENT | 163 |
| [CHAPTER VI] | |
| THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES | 198 |
| [CHAPTER VII] | |
| THE CONSTITUTION | 242 |
| [APPENDIX] | |
| THE GERMAN CONSTITUTION | 262 |
| [INDEX] | 327 |