But then, like a thin trickle of cold water into a boiling pot, comes the aged, anxious voice of the patriarchal Bernstein. He begins by reading the resolution of the Berne Conference; but we are here to attack the Paris Conference, and get restless, shouting "Zur Sache" (come to the point). He speaks of the fair-mindedness of the British delegates there, trade unionists as well as independents, and concludes that England as a people wishes to be fair to Germany; this can even be seen in developments at Paris. But we don't share this optimism--_Blödsinn_ (bosh), is about the mildest of our interjections. Still Bernstein, nothing daunted, maintains that if Germans bring facts before the English the English will be fair. "Quite true," shouts an elderly man near by. "What do you know about it?" cries a youth some rows away. "I have been longer in England than you have in the world, _Lausbub_," retorts the man. Bernstein again becomes audible, talking about Alsace-Lorraine. Once we might have appealed to foreign fairness there, too, he says, but now it is too late. Alsace-Lorraine is lost, and we lost it. This is too much for us, and we shout: "But you're speaking for partition. _Quatsch!_ (bosh). _Parteibulle!_ (party claptrap), etc." Bernstein dominates the storm enough to shout: "You have been so long fed on lies you can't swallow the truth." But we are not here to have truth shoved down our throats. Eduard Bernstein withdraws--a prophet without honour, he has this week both left the opposition party and lost his Government post. He is followed by the representative of German-Austria, the new type of professor-politician, with a Victorian appearance and a Wilsonian address--very earnest and emphatic. The union of Germany and German-Austria is, he maintains, an internal affair and quite inevitable. We give Professor Hartmann a rousing reception, and file out into the cold, clear winter weather of Berlin. Outside is a large black, red, and gold Republican flag, and a number of enthusiasts carrying placards, "No partitioning of Germany," "No peace of violence," and so forth. A long procession forms and moves off. Look at that group, mostly elderly men and women of the middle class, thin and threadbare with the look given by hardship and hunger that once in Germany one saw only in paintings of the Middle Ages--dull faces, but not without devotional fervour. So they shuffle along round a placard inscribed "Wilson's Fourteen Points," as their ancestors once shuffled in procession for Luther's theses. Unhappily Wilson did not succeed in nailing his theses to the portals of the Quai d'Orsay.