rity in German politics, potent only through the indiscretions of the
Crown Prince, and through the fact that the Constitution of Germany gives
its people no control over administrative affairs. The journals of this
sort--the _Taegliche Rundschau_, the _Berliner Post_, the _Deutsche
Tageszeitung_, and the _Berliner Neueste Nachrichten_ are the property of
Junker reactionists, or else, like the _Lokal Anzeiger_, the
_Rheinisch-Westphalische Zeitung_, the organs merely of the War trade
House of Krupp. Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single
imposing figure, Maximilian Harden, the "poet of German politics," who
"casts forth heroic gestures and thinks of politics in terms of aesthetics,
the prophet of a great, strong and saber-rattling nation," whose force
shall be felt everywhere under the sun.

Bloodthirsty pamphlets in numbers, are listed by Nippold. But the
anonymous writers ("Divinator," "Rhenanus," "Lookout," "Deutscher,"
"Politiker," "Activer General" and "Deutscher Officier") count for less
than nothing in personal influence. They do little more than bay at the
moon.

Impressive as Nippold's list seems at first, and dangerous to the peace of
the world, after all one's final thought is this: How few they are, and
how scant their influence, as compared with the wise, sane, commonsense of
sixty millions of German people. The two great papers that stand for peace
and sanity, the _Berliner Tageblatt_ and the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, with
the _Muenchener Neueste Nachrichten_, are read daily by more Germans than
all the reactionary sheets combined. The Socialist organ _Vorwaerts_,
avowedly opposed to monarchy as well as to militarism, carries farther
than all the organs of Pangermanism of whatever kind.

We may justly conclude that the war spirit is not the spirit of Germany, a
nation perforce military because the people cannot help themselves. So far
as it goes, it is the spirit of a narrow clique of "sleepless watchdogs"
whose influence is waning, and would be non-existent were it not for the
military organization which holds Germany by the throat, but which has
pushed the German people just as far as it dares.

A second lesson is that while forms of government, and social traditions,
may differ, the relation of public opinion towards war is practically the
same in all the countries of Western Europe. It is in its way the test of
European civilization. Each nation has its "sleepless watchdogs," and
thos