Amid the welter of parties two conclusions force themselves on the observer. First, the orderly democratic elements in Germany are having a hard struggle to survive; second, it is essential for the Allies to have a responsible Government in Germany with principles approximating to those of the democratic peoples. To such a Government alone can they look for the execution of Germany’s Treaty obligations. Yet they have taken no steps to secure this end. I often think that Europe will make final shipwreck over the mistaken idea of German military unity still so firmly screwed into popular imagination at home. Could we but grasp the profound internal cleavage of ideas and ideals in Germany itself, common-sense, if no higher consideration, might suggest the importance of strengthening the hands of the only party from which we have anything to hope. The democratic Government which came into existence at the time of the revolution has had an impossible task. It was confronted by hunger, defeat, despair, and the miseries which resulted from the blockade. It was not a strong Government--how could it be? Democracy is but a plant of struggling growth in Germany. The nation has had no training in self-government, and the efficient bureaucracy which still more or less survives is steeped in the old bad traditions. That under these circumstances the new Government was open to suspicion at every turn is natural enough. A more far-sighted policy, however, inspired by some faith and hope for the future would have realised that these struggling democratic ideals, if feeble, were sincere and would not have withheld all help from them. Also that the powerful internal enemies, the revolutionaries on the one hand, the reactionaries on the other, were waiting their opportunity to destroy them. Such a policy, could it have illumined the councils of Versailles, might at least have seen the folly of associating the first efforts in democratic government in Germany with rebuffs and humiliations of all kinds. The German working-man means to stand by the revolution, but hunger and general demoralisation are openings on which the reactionaries and revolutionaries are not slow to seize. These reflections were driven home to me in a most emphatic way at a meeting of the Deutsche Volkspartei which was addressed by a distinguished professor from Berlin. The Deutsche Volkspartei excites peculiar wrath in Socialist circles. The Junkers and the Right Wing extremists, left to themselves, are not dangerous. But this great Conservative capitalist block, fortified? by the funds of the big business men and the “schwer Industrie,” is considered, and rightly, a formidable adversary.