Herr Bauer, who succeeded Herr Scheidemann just before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, formed a cabinet that lasted month after month only because the German people were morally and politically dazed. The extreme Left, demanding Bolshevism, and the extreme Right, demanding a repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles, offered hopeless anarchy. Consequently the Center parties combined against a common danger. The Government could have been stabilized and could have established its authority only by securing support from the conquerors of Germany. Hope of a reasonable settlement of the reparations issue held together the Bauer Government and enabled it to put down the reactionary Kapp _coup d’état_ in Berlin in March, 1920. But it was immediately followed by a Spartacist insurrection in the Ruhr and elsewhere, with which Herr Bauer could not cope. For the Ruhr was in the neutral zone, and the French refused to permit Germany to use force there. The new cabinet, headed by Herr Müller, could not get permission from the Allies, owing to the intransigeance of the French, to put down the Communist uprising, which threatened to make all Germany Bolshevist. In desperation, the Germans went into the Ruhr without waiting for permission and succeeded in a few days in subduing the Communists. Invoking an infraction of the treaty, and acting independently of their allies, the French seized Frankfort. Some of the occupying troops were blacks, and a machine-gun was turned on a crowd in the streets of Frankfort. It is impossible to overestimate the effect in Germany of these events. Public opinion was convinced that France was seeking, not reparations, but the destruction of Germany. How else explain her unwillingness to allow the German Government to put down the Ruhr insurrection, whose success would have rendered any payments on the reparations account impossible? How else explain the refusal of France, a fortnight later, to accept the suggestion of Premiers Lloyd George and Nitti that the German Government be invited to confer with the Allied Governments on reparations and disarmament at San Remo? We have seen elsewhere how the British and Italians at San Remo agreed to stiffen their attitude toward Germany in return for concessions to Great Britain in the Near East and to Italy in the Adriatic.