The new constitution for the German Republic was passed by the National Assembly on July 31. It contained a provision giving the right to representatives of Austria to sit in the Reichstag, but not to vote “until after the union of Austria with the rest of Germany.” The Entente Powers declared that this was a violation of Article LXXX of the Treaty of Versailles and ordered it stricken out. The Germans answered that self-determination had been definitely promised as a basis for the durable world peace, and that this article was intended only to provide for what would inevitably happen, when the European situation should become stabilized. But the Entente Powers, refusing discussion, issued an ultimatum; once more Germany had to bow to force. Disastrous and humiliating as the experiences of the eight months after Germany laid down her arms had proved, the defeat had brought distinct advantages, through the revolution, to the German people. There is no cloud without its silver lining. The deposition of the Hohenzollerns had been followed by that of the other kings, princes, grand dukes, and princelings of the German Empire. It was a great step forward in the unification of Germany, begun by Napoleon in 1803, and continued by the Prussians between 1849 and 1866. It took a violent cataclysm to get rid of artificial divisions that had hindered the development of German national life. Given the antipathy of the stolid, law-abiding German for engaging in Bolshevist adventures, even for the sake of avoiding the humiliation and disadvantages of a Carthaginian peace, the situation would not have been hopeless had the victors adopted a different attitude toward Germany. The Government might have been strengthened by sympathy and understanding of its great and varied problems. The people might have been assured that if they bent their shoulder to the wheel and paid for the damages they had wrought, they would be given a chance of rehabilitation. The hatchet might have been buried, and a chastened Germany welcomed back into the family of nations. This was the policy advocated by Premier Nitti of Italy; by Lord d’Abernon, British ambassador to Berlin; and by a host of Allied officials, familiar with conditions in Germany, whom I have met on the Rhine, in Berlin, Munich, and elsewhere, since the treaty was signed. The policy is aptly expressed by Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, who said to the Commercial Club of Cincinnati on April 21, 1917: Never chant a hymn of hate against those who, for the time being, are worshiping a false god. A hymn of hate is just as displeasing in English as it is in German. We are concerned here in a conflict too solemn and too frightful to leave place for hatred; for if the issue is such as we wish it to be, we shall lift yet another nation up to the sublime plane of our own principles, a nation that is to-day powerfully armed against us.