Germany ought to know that a march on Moscow, however easy, would result in unifying the Russian army against the foe. Perhaps Germany does not know this, for she seems not to know anything about the hearts and minds of any people. The mechanics of nationality she knows and understands. The psychology of it she never understands. However, I do not believe that Germany’s recent attack and partial conquest of the islands before Riga are a prelude to a march on the capital or on Moscow. What Germany probably wants is the splendid loot to be found in Courland and Esthonia. Riga, which is a city of 400,000 inhabitants, is, next to Petrograd, the most important port on the Baltic Sea. Out from Riga go immense exports of timber, flax and hemp, linseed and many cereals. The country east and south of Riga produces these things in great quantity, and Germany needs them in her business just now, and needs them badly enough to risk a few of her ships and men to get them. Germany is not after conquest, this trip; she is after food and fuel and supplies. A little south of Riga lie the Governments of Kovno, Vilna and Minsk, and a little south and west lies Russian Poland, already partially in German hands. I traveled through part of that country last summer and watched through the train windows vast fields of rye and wheat, and thousands of acres of potatoes. I did not see many sugar-beet fields, but they lie somewhere in that region--hundreds of thousands of acres of them, already harvested or waiting to be harvested. And Germany is hungry for those harvests. There may be other reasons why Germany is pounding so desperately at the defenses of Riga. Not very far away, to the north, washed by the same Baltic Sea, lies the grand duchy of Finland, the one province of the Russian empire which has shown friendliness to Germany. Finland is also the one province which has already declared its unalterable determination not to belong further to the Russian empire. Finland wishes to set up a separate government and to be an independent state. At least the mass of the people, expressing themselves through a Socialist majority in the local Diet, has declared for this policy.