10 
LAND 6? WATER 
November 7, 1918 
In the meantime (pecember, 1^17) the industrial and coal 
region of Lille, Valenciennes, Mauheuge, etc., is a pawn. 
The French, according to the memorandum, may have it 
back eventually as compensation for Briey, which Germany 
will keep. 
The memorandum resorts, too, to the historical argument. 
■' It was only in 1766 that France took over Lorraine, after 
it had belonged for about 900 years to the German Empire." 
The modern Germans have given a new meaning to the 
phrase "belonging to" the German Empire. Those who 
doubt the distinction between meum and liitttn will swallow 
easily the assumption of continuity between the two "Ger- 
man Empires." 
The labour argument is also used. On the basis of certain 
insurance statistics employds in the mining and working of 
iron appear to number 16 per cent, of the total, and to draw 
iq-6 per cent, of the total wages. The interests of this great 
mass of high-paid labour must, of course, be safeguarded. 
No one can doubt that iron, of all materials, is the first 
interest of labour, if he will reflect on the enormous difference 
in value between, for instance, a ton of raw iron and a ton 
of hair-springs. 
Nor does the memorandum ignore the agarians. The soil 
needs phosphorus, which is always a scarce commodity. 
Phosphorus, fortunately, is available as a by-product of 
the Thomas Steel process. Thus the French iron which 
German farmers need must be taken by force. 
And, finally, if Germany has her way with the Lorrain^ 
iron-fields she will be able to satisfy her commercial vanity 
to the full. " In thus raising our annual production of iron 
ore to 60 million tons we shall thereby equal the American 
production before the war and assure ourselves annually of 
20 million tons of pig." ^ 
It is a curious medley of motives that reveals itself here — 
solemn greed, spite, wilful misunderstanding, pedantry, 
falsehood, vanity. In its lower limbs the German idol of 
militarism is indeed of base stuff. But the "iron" facts 
and the derivative policy disclosed in the memorandum 
must be kept in view at the Peace Conferences. In forty 
or fifty years, if Germany fails to annex more of France, 
German native ores will be exhausted. At no point within 
that period will it be practicable for her to conduct a world 
war. If she loses the territory seized from France in 1871 
she will scarcely be in a position to fight her smaller neigh- 
bours singly. The conclusions to be drawn are obvious. 
In a general way, it is difficult not to sympathise with a 
great nation that has no native iron, or soon will have none. 
But Germany has hardened every heart against herself. 
German International Again: By H. M. Hyndman 
Sham Democracy to the Rescue 
EVERY step which is taken at the present time by 
any of the German parties or by their official 
spokesmen must be regarded as an effort to secure 
for the Fatherland a German peace. There is no 
democracy in Germany ; nor do I myself believe 
tliere will be popular government there, in any true sense, 
for many years to come. The whole nation has been com- 
pletely Prussianised. I have known Germany since I was 
a boy of sixteen, and the change in the tone and aspirations 
of the people since 1858 is amazing. They have become a 
highly organised national machine for the economic and 
military subjugation first of their neighbours, and then of 
the civilised world. This process of Prussianisation has pro- 
ceeded with cunmlative effect in every direction. Its success 
was particularly marked between i8qo and 1914, growing 
with the growth of Germany's industrial development and 
the organisation of her powers of offence by land and by sea. 
Every section of society has been imbued with the concep- 
tion of " Deutscliland iiber Alles." Even the Social-Demo- 
crats, to whom, I confess, I had looked with hope as an 
effective agency of opposition to Junker brutality and ruth- 
lessness, have been supporters of piracy, devastation, torture, 
and infamy of every kind, just like any other part of the 
German population. 
A Double-Faced Democracy 
1 knew well, of course, that the Social-Democrats could not 
possibly check mobilisation, even for the 'most aggressive 
and unjust war possible. Their old leaders had told me so 
plainly long ago, and I published their statements to this 
effect before the war. But I did expect that the nev school 
of Social-Democrats, though far more chauvinist than their 
predercessors, would vote against or, at least, abstain from 
voting for the Imperial War Credits, and thus proclaim the 
solidarity of the German Socitdists with those of other coun- 
tries. Far from doing this, they played a most sinister 
j,'ame. After having formally pledged themselves up to the 
hilt in Paris and Brussels to refuse to vote those credits a 
few days, and even hours, before hostilities began, they 
returned to Berlin ; and when the French, partly on the 
strength of their assurances and partly in order to avoid the 
slightest risk of any altercation with the German armies, 
withdrew their own troops eight miles from the frontier, 
then these same leaders of the Social-Democrats and their 
followers voted with the Kaiser's Government on this very 
issue. Baser betrayal of the whole International Socialist 
movement and the highest interests of the European peoples 
there could not be. How such men can be trusted again 
by any class in any country and, above all, by the working 
class of Great Britain and the other Allied countries passes 
my comprehension ! 
So completely were the whole of the Germans hypnotised 
by Prussian militarism, so completely were they filled with 
the ideal of their own superhumanity, ^o completely had 
the\- erected their State Moloch into a God of all-conquering 
force and victorious brutality, that even Karl Liebnecht 
— whose more recent conduct we all admire — was so intoxi- 
cated and bemused by this new material divinity that in 
the early days of the war he actually advised the Belgians 
to submit to German control ! 
But if Karl Liebnecht, son of the famous oft-imprisoned 
Wilhelm of the same name, felt thus, what was the spirit of 
the Social-Democrats and the rest of the German workers 
who had no such heritage of parental self-sacrifice and tradi- 
tions of international brotherhood as he ? We soon found 
out. From the very first they supported the Kaiser, the 
Junkers, their marshals, generals, admirals, ((fficers, governors, 
and common soldiers and sailors in the commission of the 
most hideous crimes that have degraded mankind in modern 
times. Not a word of organised protest did they raise against 
the sinking, of unarmed passenger ships, or the shooting 
down of the passengers themselves, when they endeavoured 
to escape drowning in their boats. They made no objection 
to the outrages and horrors of which their armies were guilty, 
under the Kaiser's orders, in Belgium, France, and Eastern 
Europe. For the starvation and torture of British prisoners 
they uttered not a syllable of condemnation. The entire. 
German nation, Social-Democrats and all, not merely the 
Kaiser and his ruthless crew — Germany as a nation is re- 
sponsible for this long record of almost inconceivable atrocity. 
Germany as a nation therefore must be made to realise 
what her people have been guilty of by the enforcement of 
the fullest possible reparation, the exaction of the sternest 
system of guarantees for payment and the observance of 
good faith. 
As a loyal and active Social-Democrat, who has done as 
much for the Socialist cause as any man living, I have watched 
with deepest sorrow the poisoning of the wells of thought 
throughout the Fatherland by the war germ, engendered 
first in North-East Prussia. I am convinced that any weak- 
ness now on the part of the Allies will be bitterly regretted 
by our successors in the near future. Nothing short of 
absolute overthrow will prevent a recurrence of the whole 
bloody work under more favcnirable circumstances for 
Germany. 
The Change of Front 
For these reasons I view with deep-seated suspicion the 
strong effort now being made by the sham democracy and 
Socialism of Germany and German-Austria to use an Inter- 
national Socialist Congress in order to obtain easy terms of 
peace for Germany herself. The German Social-Democrats 
and the Austrian Social-Democrats both made quite sure 
at first that they were going to win. Everybody remembers 
the truculent language then used by Scheidemann, Siidekum, 
Heine, Ebert, and the Social-Democrats generally towards 
