The British Empire is famed for its tradition that her craftsmen have excelled in the mechanism of watches and clocks, thus adding many laurels to horological achievement. Under the direction of a commission appointed by the Government, Canada has adopted watch inspection regulations upon her three transcontinental railroads, as well as all other lines under governmental supervision. It was a signal honor, then, and a tribute to excelling merit, when Canada gave to Waltham watches supremacy upon these great transcontinental routes and subsidiary railroads. Indeed, there are three times as many Waltham watches in use upon the railroads of Canada as all other makes of watches combined. The Canadian Government also selected Waltham watches as its standard for polar expedition work and in the a timepiece should be a Waltham. The Vanguard is the world's finest railroad watch. WALTHAM THE WORLD'S WATCH OVER TIME The Vanguard The World's Finest Railroad Watch 23 and 19 jewels PUBLIC OPINION (New York) combined with THE LITERARY DIGEST Published by Funk & Wagnalls Company (Adam W. Wagnalls, Pres.; Wilfred J. Funk, Vice-Pres.; Robert J. Cuddihy, Treas.; William Neisel, Sec'y), 354-360 Fourth Ave., New York Vol. LIX, No. 8 New York, November 23, 1918 Whole Number 1492 A TOPICS OF THE - DAY BOLSHEVISM THREATENING THE WORLD SHUDDER runs through the Western nations as they watch the millions of Central Europe plunge from autocracy to anarchy, and our publicists begin to ask if we must fight again against the new foe. "Must we save the world from anarchy?" is on every lip, and the fact that such questions as these are being asked everywhere is proof enough, as The New Republic (New York) notes, that "the war does not end when the enemy surrenders." ExPresident Taft, calling attention in the Philadelphia Public Ledger to the sweep of Bolshevism through Germany and Austria, declares that this new movement may "stop short of nothing but a massacre of all who are respectable, thrifty, educated, or decent," and he hints that our armies may yet be needed to aid Russia to her feet, and to help the Austrian people "regain selfcontrol denied them by the bloody hands of anarchy and mob rule." The Socialist New York Call protests against this as a demand for the inauguration of "a war of imperialism," in which our own "financial and commercial dynasties" would seek to aid the like "German brood." In other words, "it is a Holy Alliance of the ernment of Germany is aiming at an understanding with Russia, and one correspondent hears that " some of the German and Russian Bolsheviki go so far as to talk of a common resistance to the Western Powers." Other dispatches tell how thousands of German soldiers, without orders and unrestrained by their BEFORE AND AFTER. The Imperial ruler and Friedrich Ebert, the Socialist tailor, who succeeded him 'respectable, thrifty, educated, or decent," officers, are filling the long troop-trains and coming back to the German cities over which the red flag now floats. If Germany's "wild men succeed in enlisting in their support the brutish elements of the German Army" it will be a serious thing for the world, the New York Globe believes. Bolshevism, this New York daily warns its readers, is not only "antidemocratic and autocratic, but is aggressive," and "if the power that remains with Russia and Germany is hurled at the democratic world in a new enterprise of conquest, the peace may not be of long duration." Mr. Frank H. Simonds, the conservative and well-informed military critic of the New York Tribune, turns his attention from problems of strategy to those of peace, and comes to the similar conclusion that there is no sound reason for indulging in "immediate expectations of a return to old conditions of peace and quiet." He notes the parallelism between the early events of the respective revolutions in Russia and Germany, and reminds us that the Russian revolution was brought about by German influence "and based upon the ideas of the German Socialists." He further recalls the fact that in both countries the basis of revolution was "hunger, aggravated by "If the recent course of events in Germany be not promptly changed, nothing seems more certain than that we shall at no distant time find ourselves facing eastward over the Rhine upon a vast seething mass of anarchy, extending from the Rhine to the Siberian wastes and including within its limits the 300,000,000 people of Russia, Germany, and Austria. "If the present movement in Germany continues we shall find also that the hostility which swept over Russia after the revolution, the hostility for the Western nations, the hatred of Britain and of America as reactionary states, will appear in Germany. "All contemporary signs point to the swift arrival in Germany of exactly the same sort of control which has plunged Russia into anarchy and ruin. German autocracy has failed in its effort to make over the world, but German socialism, which has already conquered Russia and Germany and has invaded Austria and Bulgaria, is not less hostile to the Western form of democracy than was German autocracy. "The thing Americans as a mass do not and can not understand is that to the German and Russian Socialists the American form of democracy seems more hideous than their own expiring autocracies. The men who now control the German and Russian revolutions are as hostile to the form of representative democracy under which we live as we should be to the Hohenzollern or Hapsburg rule, which was for them but an intermediate stage between slavery and complete liberation. "A new war of ideas has begun between Central Europe and the Western nations. It may lead to a new war before the old war has finally been liquidated. It seems bound to lead to new horrors and fresh anarchy. It may preclude any settlement such as the league of nations provided, because the Germans and Russians of the revolution may refuse to deal with nations which they regard as reactionary and capitalistic. To national war international class war may now succeed, will now succeed if Germany and Russia can bring it about." The Kaiser, who, it was said, had violently protested that he would never abandon his people in their hour of distress, abdicated on November 9, and fled to a castle in Holland, where he was interned by the Dutch Government. For the present, Wilhelm, Count von Hohenzollern, seems to be safe from such a fate as overtook Nicholas Romanof, but it is impossible to pick up any newspaper without reading suggestions for inflicting upon him a punishment fitting his crimes. Before and after the Kaiser's abdication, Germany's minor princes were accepting the situation and abdicating at the rate of two or three a day. The red wave within a week was sweeping away all of Germany's dynasties, a Red Guard like that in Russia appeared as if by magic to defend the red flags that were soon flying over the cities and factories and fortresses and palaces of the most thickly populated regions of Germany. This guard soon took control of all news channels and the train service. Bavarian Socialists declared an independent republic, but the German revolution soon appeared to lose its separatist character, and the aim of the Socialists now seems to be a single German republic, which, it may be noted, German Austria is thought likely to enter. Soviets or Soldiers' and Workmen's Councils were at once organized in the chief cities of northern Germany, as well as among the soldiers and sailors. Amsterdam dispatches told of the conversion of the Reichstag building into a soldiers' camp where travel-stained Red Guards munched their army bread in luxurious upholstered chairs. Loyal officers in Berlin fought the crowds with machine guns, but if the dispatches may be believed there was comparatively little bloodshed during the first days following the Kaiser's exit. Perhaps one reason for this was the prompt announcement of Field-Marshal von Hindenburg and of the Commander of the Eastern Army that they and their troops would support the new régime. Upon the abdication of the Kaiser, Prince Max was succeeded as Chancellor by the Socialist Friedrich Ebert. Germany's Government by November 14 consisted "exclusively of Socialists, responsible to Soviets chosen by organized workers and in which the remainder of the population has no voice." This, continues Mr. Arno Dosch-Fleurot, the New York World's Copenhagen correspondent, "is Lenine's program and is as conscious a form of Bolshevism as the present Russian Government." While the new régime was forming at Berlin, radical doctrines were being openly preached in Sweden, Holland, Spain, and Switzerland. The raising of the red flag in Austria and Germany as well as Russia, and the possible spread of what our editors generally call Bolshevism to other countries, is described by the St. Louis Star "as the worst menace to democracy that now exists since autocracy has been overthrown." It has been predicted again and again that a German revolution would be impossible, because of the discipline, comparative prosperity, and temperament of the German people. It was a German philosopher, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat recalls, who said, "Germany can never have a revolution, because it is verboten." But, this newspaper observes, the might that enforces obedience has been broken and with its passing "the potency of verboten has disappeared." When a people long regulated by superior authority find that authority removed, they have, it is remarked, "no inherent restraints from the excesses of individual license." As The Globe-Democrat sums it up: "Autocracy and anarchy would seem to be at opposite poles, but it is only a step from one to the other. Lower the eagles of despotic imperialism and instantly the red flag is raised." Similarly, the New York Evening Sun finds the most unfortunate feature of the situation to be the fact that the German people have been so long left "utterly untutored in the art of self-government." It declares that there is not "in all Germany one-hundredth part of the political knowledge which was assembled in Philadelphia one hundred and thirty-one years ago, to give this people the constitution which has proved so efficient and enduring." The New York Tribune tells its readers that there is more in common, emotionally and psychically, between Russian and German proletarians than has often been clear" "The soul of the proletariat in both countries is a peasant, envious, gloomy soul. The Russian got his socialism from the German; and it suited both equally, because it was a socialism of fear, hatred, and revenge. The German, like the Russian, submitted to a million tyrannies in helpless despair, sublimated his grievances by faith in the divine right of kings, believing it less and less, and went stolidly on with an existence of terrific repressions. "Now suddenly banish all the verboten signs, lift the private and social and political restraints, give control of Germany disorder that was bound to accompany the Bolshevism inherited from the old Russian nihilism. The Boston Globe lays stress on the superior education of the German people, reminding us that whereas "Russia was predominantly illiterate, in Germany illiteracy is less than 1 per cent." "By as much as Germany is better educated than Russia," we are told, "her revolution ought to be an orderly process from bondage to freedom." The New York Evening Post argues against an imitation of the Russian revolution in Germany on the score of the difference in the relative strength of proletariat and bourgeoisie in the two countries. It estimates the combined peasants and working classes of the towns at 85 per cent. of the total population of Russia. Thus "the conflict would be one of the 'submerged' 95 per cent. against the middle class 5 per cent." But in Germany the middle class compose 25 per cent. of the population and have old artizan and burgher traditions which strongly differentiate them from the proletariat. This journal, therefore, thinks a proletariat supremacy is quite unlikely. It further reminds us that the demand for peace which stirred up both revolutions has been granted almost at the outset in Germany. Besides, there is no land problem in Germany, and the factoryworkers of Germany and Austria will "hesitate before turning privation into actual destitution by proletarianizing the factories. on the Russian model." But The Evening Post believes that the strongest guaranty against Bolshevism in Central Europe is "the triumphant principle of nationalism," by which, particularly in Austria, subject peoples will "not have been defeated if they emerge from the war as free nations in alliance with the victorious democracies of the West." Mr. Hearst's New York American makes the point that the German people are revolting chiefly against political rather than economic ills. The German state has gone to the extreme of paternalism in caring for its subjects, it is noted. "Public ownership of public utilities, government supervision of housing and of labor conditions, middle-age pensions and insurance-all the palliatives of the "The present and all that it holds belongs to the nations and the peoples who preserve their self-control and the orderly processes of their governments; the future to those who prove themselves the true friends of mankind. "The peoples who have but just come out from under the yoke of arbitrary government and who are now coming at last into their freedom will never find the treasures of liberty they are in search of if they look for them by the light of the torch. They will find that every pathway that is stained with the blood of their own brothers leads to the wilderness, not to the seat of their hope. They are now face to face with their initial test. We must hold the light steady until they find themselves. And in the meantime, if it be possible, we must establish a peace that will justly define their place among the nations, remove all fear of their neighbors and of their former masters, and enable them to live in security and contentment when they have set their own affairs in order. I, for one, do not doubt their purpose or their capacity." tively peaceful changes" in Germany. It insists that the transfer of power in Austria, Bohemia, Bavaria, and a number of German cities was accomplished with a minimum of disorder, and that "on the whole there was less violence than occurs in a New York election with Tammany thugs on the job." AN "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" "T HE UTTER SUBMISSION and stripping of the Hun," "A surrender unexampled in the history of the world," "If ever in the world's history there was an Unconditional Surrender, it is this of Germany"these are some typical expressions of the reaction of the country's editors to the terms of the armistice that ended the Great War. The New York Herald, since the early days of the war most bitterly insistent on German defeat, exults that "German militarism is not only defeated, but crusht; not only prone, but bound hand and foot. Did ever another truculent militarism meet such a débâcle?" The New York Evening Post, whose attitude has been characterized by that coolness which much ratiocination is supposed to bring to the emotions, is equally enthusiastic. Says The Post: "To have lived to see this day fills up the measure of happiness of uncounted millions." "They are very adequate. The armistice was admirably drawn by the best military minds of the United States, Great Britain, and France," in the opinion of a famous international lawyer, and the New York Journal of Commerce declares that the armistice "means that for years the German states will be unable to think in terms of armed force against any of the Powers associated against them." A weekly magazine which is looked upon as a representative of "liberal" thought, The New Republic, is inclined to think that the Austrians and Germans will "prove to be more circumspectly revolutionary" than the Russians. But it refuses to prophesy, and asks whether these countries can "assure us that they will keep their revolutionary virus at home so that our peoples, especially those of France, Belgium, and Italy, should remain uncontaminated." It sees the possible danger of "a new tho concealed war against social revolutionaries in all countries, enemy and Allied, in order to prevent the contagion from spreading," and even a possibility that what was to have been a "League of Nations" will become in these circumstances a "Holy Alliance." It concludes: "How far we shall go in guiding, restraining, or defeating the probably unruly and immoderate democracies in what was Austria-Hungary, and perhaps Germany, may well prove to be one of those contests that the battle-field bequeaths to the peace table." According to the Washington Post's summary of the revised terms, Germany has been forced to agree to (1) the immediate evacuation of all invaded countries. (2) The imprisonment of all German troops not so withdrawn. (3) The repatriation, within two weeks, of all citizens of Allied or associated countries imprisoned in Germany. (4) The surrender of 5,000 guns, 25,000 machine guns, 3,000 Minenwerfer, and 1,700 airplanes. (5) The occupation by Allied troops of the German lands on the left bank of the Rhine, with frequent bridgeheads, making the further invasion of Germany comparatively easy. (6) The support of the Allied army of occupation to be at the cost of Germany. (7) All poisoned wells and mines in evacuated territory are to be revealed, and no damage shall be done by the evacuating German troops. (8) Surrender of 5,000 locomotives, 150,000 cars, and 5,000 motor-cars. (9) Surrender of all German submarines (including submarine cruisers and all mine-laying submarines) now existing, with their complete armament. (10) Repatriation of all war-prisoners in Germany without reciprocity. (11) All German troops to withdraw within German frontiers. (12) German troops immediately to cease all requisitions. (13) All stolen money must be restored. (14) Treaties of Bucharest and Brest-Litovsk abandoned. (15) Unconditional capitulation of German forces in East Africa. (16) Reparation for damage done in invaded countries. (17) Location of all German ships revealed. (18) Six German battle-cruisers, ten battleships, eight light cruisers, and fifty destroyers of the latest type are to be disarmed and interned in neutral ports. All other surface war-ships are to be concentrated in German ports, Allied statesmen are at work already in advance of the peace conference to prevent anarchy and despair in Germany by their insistence on a peace of justice and not of revenge, and by their plans for feeding the starving people of Central Europe. In his address to Congress, in which he announced the terms of the armistice with Germany, President Wilson declared that by organizing relief work in the Central Empires "it ought presently to be possible to lift the fear of utter misery from their opprest populations and set their minds and energies free for the great and hazardous tasks of political reconstruction which now face them on every hand." The President continued: "Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds madness and all the ugly distempers that make an ordered life impossible. |