as chain armour or robber barons, is
its supposed honesty and efficiency; but no class which has
brought this war on the German people can be described as
competent; no sane governing class would have plunged into
disastrous war a country that by peaceful penetration, by thrift
and manufacture, and financial and commercial ability was in
process of acquiring much of the wealth of the world.

The _first_ aim of German autocracy is to keep its own political
position at home.

_Second_--To obtain as much of the territory of other nations, as
great an influence in unconquered lands, as possible.

_Third_--To make peace now, but only if that peace is a German
peace, a peace which can be called and advertised and proclaimed
as a German victory.

More particularly, Germany now looks to the East. In the
so-called Baltic provinces of Russia the lands to a great extent
are owned by Russian subjects of German blood. The peasants are
poor, servile, without education or property, an ideal field for
the advance of autocracy. It is hoped to either annex these
provinces boldly or to establish protectorates, which, sooner or
later, at an opportune moment, will fall into German hands--just
as Austria gained the consent of Europe to a protectorate over
Bosnia and Herzegovina and then suddenly added them to the
domains of the Hapsburgs.

The German propagandists have long been working on the people of
that part of Russia known as the Ukraine. If the Ukraine can be
made a separate protectorate or a semi-independent state, some
day it will be easily absorbed. The autocracy has the same hope
about Lithuania, at one time semi-independent. There, too, the
propagandists have worked on Lithuania--all these provinces, of
course, differing slightly from the races surrounding and all
with a semi-independent history, as, for instance, Courland.

But all these races should think twice before they accept a
momentary independence, if that autonomy is to lead them under
the Prussian yoke. Whether that yoke is easy to bear or not is
best answered by the Danes, Alsatians, Poles and Lorrainers who
have been forcibly incorporated in the Kingdom of Prussia.

But greatest prize of all is the commercial control of Russia
which the autocracy hopes to win for its merchant class. Time and
again I was told in Germany that a separate peace with Russia was
near and that the exploitation of Russia by the enterprising
German merchants, in a short time, woul