ing of the fifth war year is even more chauvinist than their previous fulminations. The French workingmen have conducted themselves very well. I have read a full account in Populaire of the action taken by their General Confederation of Labor. If we could get it before our working people properly interpreted, and make them understand what the workingmen are endeavoring to do in England and Italy, it would clarify the situation greatly. Another noteworthy thing is the attitude of Populaire toward the Bolsheviki. It is resolutely opposed to all Entente intervention in Russia, and endeavors to promote an understanding of Bolshevist policy, a policy of aligning the Proletariat definitely against the Bourgeoisie and Socialism definitely against Capitalism. That is the guiding idea for that journal. The situation of the Bolsheviki since the English invasion of North Russia, the advance of the Czecho-Slovaks, and the Japanese occupation of Siberia, has become desperate. Their position has been strengthened with respect to Germany, because our defeats on the Western front and the chaos in Ukraine have compelled Germany to be more conciliatory. So far as my information goes, the Moscow people are aware of this and taking advantage of it...

October 1, 1918. Events are crowding each other fast. An attentive reader of the foreign press could not have failed to see for several weeks past that something was going to happen in Bulgaria. Our government has allowed itself to be surprised again. The Bulgarian peasants have been at war for eight years and unable to till their fields; so at last they have thrown down their arms and gone back to work. The spokesman for our war office described it as a re-migration,' in attempting to

explain to the Reichstag the defeat on the Bulgarian front. Whereupon, Erzberger, who was the next speaker, remarked wittily: 'I do not understand that foreign word "re-migration." Perhaps its German equivalent is "desertion." The Bulgarian soldiers are not only exhausted by the long duration of the war, but they are ragged and starved. As recently as June of the present year, the German government delivered to Bulgaria a quarter of a million uniforms. Last week, we let Bulgaria annex North Dobrudja in order to keep it loyal to us. The people are so weary of war that no inducement will make them fight longer. Tsar Ferdinand sent in his abdication Thursday, but it was refused. However, the throne is crumbling and shrewd old Ferdinand has already sent his children to Vienna. Our government still counts on him. Still, we know beyond doubt that he has sent negotiators to Salonica.

The break-up of the Turkish army in Palestine shows that Turkey will speedily follow Bulgaria's example, whereupon Austria will try to get separate terms. Already that is being suggested in the Vienna Parliament.

You can hardly conceive the state of public opinion here. Yesterday, the Centre Party asked the government how large an indemnity we would have to pay to Belgium. Only a short time ago, I was howled down as a traitor because I ventured to say it was our duty to compensate Belgium. Men who are monarchists to the bone are declaring publicly that the Hohenzollerns must go, if that is necessary to stop the war. You often hear such expressions as this on railway trains: 'Let the French have Alsace-Lorraine, providing we get peace.'

The Kaiser's consent to the formation of a quasi-parliamentary cabinet speaks volumes. Everybody is terri

fied. If we survive the present panic, things will settle back into the old status, unless the people put into effect a radical reform before then. The coalition ministry now being organized will probably play out in a few months. The men recommended for cabinet places yesterday- Ebert, Legien, Südekum do not inspire much confidence among thoughtful workingmen here, and are distrusted by workingmen abroad. Nothing will do more to clarify the situation than just such a coalition ministry.

November 26, 1918.

I have missed you greatly during the revolution. The harsh armistice conditions, the inevitably precipitate demobilization, the government control of our food supply, have made it more necessary than ever to keep the administrative machine working smoothly. Our old bureaucrats have adjusted themselves to the revolution, because they realize that the old government is hopelessly done for. But they are not friendly to radical reforms in our economic and social system. Yet we cannot dispense with their skilled services. However, the Scheidemann people have gone further than this, and have left bourgeois officials in influential political positions. We have not yet got Solf out of the Foreign Office, which he is running in the good old style. I would have seized the government with my followers, but the soldiers were practically unanimous that we should share it with Ebert, and if we had not done so, our bourgeois experts might have struck. So we have been forced to do things which went sadly against our feelings. Revolutionary enthusiasm has received a check.

But the revolution as a whole is only beginning. It depends on the government for its future direction.

June 21, 1919.

The comedy of errors is over for the moment. It was more humorous than entertaining. Confusion of counsels, vacillation, decisions which were immediately annulled, halfway decisions, concessions all crowded into the last few days! In order to win over the Democrats, the Social Democrats decided to accept the treaty subject to six conditions, which will have been published by the time this reaches you. However, the rank and file of the conservative Socialists were afraid to commit themselves. It was clear that to do so meant Allied occupation, and they would not permit that, although Democrats like Theodor Wolff are ready to take the chance. So the telegram containing this decision was countermanded about nine o'clock, or before it reached Versailles. The change of plan was so sudden, and there was so much pulling and backing, that Fehrenbach did not know the telegram had been canceled until eleven o'clock to-day.

The attitude of the Democrats has put the Social Democrats in a hole. They must share responsibility now with the Centrists alone; but they did not at once sever their relations with the Democrats. They thought that they could keep Dernburg in the cabinet, not as a representative of that party, but as a technical expert; and announced with obvious relief that the cabinet would be completed about one o'clock to-day.

But they had hardly made this statement public, when news came that the Democrats would not serve in the government under any conditions, and consequently that Dernburg and Bernstorff could not be counted on. So a new chase after cabinet officers started. Now - between two and three this afternoon the list is finished. It consists of

Social Democrats and Centrists. Bauer is prime minister a comical outcome. As soon as peace is assured, the Centrists can courteously bid the bid the Social Democrats good-bye, and ally themselves with the bourgeois parties in a new cabinet. The Democrats make no secret of their game, which is to evade responsibility for the most important task before a new government that is accepting the treaty and yet declare themselves supporters of that government. So we have one burlesque following another.

The conservative Socialists are greatly concerned as to whether we Independents will honestly vote in favor of the treaty. We are being asked our intention from every side. People cannot conceive such a thing as a party shaping its course strictly according to its principles. German politics are governed so largely by expediency and considerations of immediate tactical advantage, that our leaders cannot comprehend what principles are. Unless we support the treaty, they will not have a majority.

[Svobodnyia Mysli (Free Thoughts, Paris Anti-Bolshevist Russian Newspaper), November 15, 1920]

MAY IT NOT BE TOO LATE?

BY ARKADY AVERCHENKO

[The author of this sketch is the greatest living Russian writer of satire. He recently escaped from Soviet Russia and is now in Paris.]

I SAY that this happened, because it will happen.

What difference does it make, whether it is the future, the present, or the past? In the tempest of its mad revolutions, the Devil's Wheel mingles everything into a moment: the future instantly becomes the present, and the present disappears into the heap of ruins, known as the past.

When I think of this, I try to imagine that we have already taken Petrograd. At the thought of this, my blood boils in frenzy of joy and its waves begin to inundate my withered heart. We are in Petrograd!

And then cowardly fear fills me. I grow pale, and begin to pray, cravenly, criminally, illogically:

'Postpone all this! Push it away into the recesses of our remoter days! I am afraid.'

Generally speaking, I am brave. Generally speaking, we have all become hardened and beast-like; we are ready to attack a machine gun unarmed. But.

I am afraid of Petrograd.

Two thoughts are at strife within me, like two infuriated dragons: 'What happiness! We shall take Petrograd!'

'I am afraid. Do not take Petrograd!' 'What are you afraid of? Petrograd is our dearest aim, our profoundest desire. What do you fear?'

'I am afraid that we shall take Petrograd when it will be too late for those who are in it.'

And this is what I am afraid of the possibility of a picture like the following:

In the suburbs of Petrograd, the retreating Red troops were still firing on the advancing Russian army, but the centre of the city was already free. A man in civilian clothes, unable to contain his happiness, separated himself from the advancing detachment and ran into one of the side streets of the half-dead city. At the end of the street he saw a bread line.

About seventy men and women stood in line in front of a door over which hung the sign, 'Bread upon presentation of labor cards.'

Like a bomb bursting in a bog, the young conqueror rushed into the

group.

'Comrades. No, the Devil with the comrades! Friends, brothers, you are free! The accursed Commune does not exist any more. From now on each one of you is a free citizen of Great and Mighty Russia.'

'What is he talking about?' asked an old man in a frightened tone, turning to a girl whose face was of a greenish hue. 'What has happened to him, anyway?'

'He says that we are free, that the Commune has fallen.'

The old man moved his lips for an instant and then nodded;

'Maybe that's good. Maybe. That means that they'll let my son out of the Extraordinary Commission, if he is still alive.'

A woman scratched her side and asked, 'And how about the day after tomorrow? They promised to give us soap and salt. Does it mean that we won't get it? That won't do.'

'What soap? What salt?' The young man was in rapture, burning like a torch. 'From now on you will live like human beings. Everything you need, you will be able to buy freely, just as much as you need.'

"That's wonderful,' said the old man indifferently, and began to study the neck of the man immediately ahead of him.

you could take my place in the line.'

'Are you crazy, or what's happened to you? Why the Devil should I want that lump of putty you call bread? Am I not telling you in plain Russian that Petrograd is in the hands of the Russian army?'

'And how much bread are they going to give to the second category?' asked a workman with a tired, yellow face.

"There won't be any categories. You'll get as much as you need.'

'He is a liar,' said the lucky individual who stood first in the line, nearest to the coveted door.

'Yes, how is it possible to be without categories?'

'Why don't you go about your business, young man?' said the old fellow. 'What's the use in hanging around here like this? Maybe you want to get into the line, then your place is back there; no objections.'

'But don't you understand: you are free?' continued the young man. "Think of it, if you want to, you can go anywhere you wish without any 'labor books,' or permits, or extraordinary commissions. Just get into a train and go to Odessa, or Sebastopol, or Kursk, wherever you wish.'

'And what do I want to do there?' snickered the woman who stood

'Friends, brothers!' shouted the young man, jumping from one to another, seizing them by the hands and swinging their arms like the handles of broken pumps. 'Why do you stand here? Run home and shout, hurrah!'

'Hurrah,' came weakly from one man in the line, as he stepped from one foot to another.

'You are a clever fellow,' said the old man, gazing at the young conqueror with an expression of anger and fear. 'You want me to run home so that

me get soles for my shoes over at the Commissariat of Supplies, I'd be forever thankful to you. And, maybe, some lamp oil. . .'

The young man tried every trick he knew to fire up that crowd, but the bread line, stretching like a long, gray snake, slow and sleepy through hunger, remained unmoved, waiting patiently for the slices of bread; only the first man in the line occasionally rapped timidly on the door, while the rear end of the line grew and grew in length.

The young man, finally grown weary

with his efforts, burst out into tears and went away.

It was growing dusk. The sounds of a military march came from the distance, and shots were heard. The line became somewhat agitated.

'Why are they playing?'

'And just listen to that shooting.' "They say the White Guards have come in.'

'You mean Kolchak? Well, I only hope they'll issue what they promised for to-morrow on the November coupon.'

The line moved about for a minute, and then everything became quiet again.

Of course, we shall take Petrograd. But if it will be as I have described is that not enough to strike you with maddening fear?

[Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Swiss Liberal Republican Daily), November 22, 1920] HUGO STINNES: AN INDUSTRIAL LUDENDORFF

BY JOHANNES FISCHART

A PLAY in four acts possibly five. Not a Socialist, but a Capitalist drama. The fable of a spider which cautiously spins its web wider and wider, over fields, forests, mountains, and valleys, until its silken, glistening, shimmering threads reaches far beyond the utmost confines of the land. A cold, calculat

ing, unemotional man, revealing, little by little, a grandiose imagination, incorporating his will in gold, profits, production, power, and public policy that is Hugo Stinnes.

Let this do for the prologue. Now the curtain rises.

First act. The cast: Stinnes' family. It is not an old one. His grandfather founded the firm of Matthias Stinnes, Limited, at Mülheim. It was a very

modest undertaking financially according to present standards. Hugo's father, of the same name, called himself merely a merchant. The young man was sent to a scientific school where he completed his course without incident. After graduating he served a term as a commercial apprentice at Coblenz. His stay there was brief. There was not sufficient field for his energy in the retail trade, and he speedily became dissatisfied with his prospects. For some months he did manual labor as a practical miner both above ground and below. Then in 1889 he entered the School of Mines at Berlin. Twelve months later he joined the firm of Matthias Stinnes, in which his mother owned a fifth interest. But he stayed there for less than two years. Thereupon he severed completely his relations with this grandfather's company and founded his own house, Hugo Stinnes, Limited, with a capital of fifty thousand marks. This was in 1893, when he was but twenty-two years old.

Second act. Rising fortunes: Stinnes became a coal dealer. He soon got control of several pits. He started the manufacture of briquettes. Next he branched out into iron and steel. A little later he controlled river and ocean going vessels. Then he established foreign agencies and began trading heavily in coal abroad. Soon he had thirty coal stations, in all parts of the world. Stinnes' fleet, consisting of thirteen medium-size steamers, owned by himself, traded in coal, wood, ore, and grain, through the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the North Sca, and the Baltic. He brought English coal from his Newcastle branch to Hamburg and Rotterdam. His great establishment in the latter city was on the black list during the war. From these distributing points he shipped coal to Genoa, Stettin, Königsberg, and