ar.

And what a sensation, too, would be caused in America if the
Bethlehem Steel Company or the United States Steel Corporation
were to purchase newspapers or take over The Associated Press in
order to control public opinion! Yet the German nation stands by,
apathetic, propagandised to a standstill, stuffed and fed by news
handed them by the Krupps and the alliance of six great
industrial iron and steel companies of western Germany.

* * * * *

A question which interests every inhabitant of the world to-day
is, where does the ultimate power reside in Germany?

Where is the force which controls the country? The Reichstag, of
course, has no real power; the twenty-five ruling princes of
Germany, voting in the Bundesrat through their representatives,
control the Reichstag, and the Chancellor is not responsible to
either but only to the Emperor.

Consider, for a moment, the personality of von Bethmann-Hollweg,
Chancellor of the Empire for eight or nine years. He lacked both
determination and decision. Lovable, good, kind, respected, the
Chancellor, to a surprising degree, was minus that quality which
we call "punch." He never led, but followed. He sought always to
find out first which side of the question seemed likely to
win,--where the majority would stand. Usually he poised himself
on middle ground. He could not have been the ultimate power in
the State.

I have a feeling that the Kaiser himself always felt in some
vague way that his luck lay with America, and I imagine that he
himself was against anything that might lead to a break with this
country. What, then, was the mysterious power which changed, for
instance, the policy of the German Empire towards America and
ordered unrestricted submarine war at the risk of bringing
against the Empire a rich and powerful nation of over a hundred
million population?

The Foreign Office did not have this decision. Its members, made
up of men who had travelled in other countries, who knew the
latent power of America, did not advise this step--with the
exception, however, of Zimmermann, who, carried away by his
sudden elevation, and by the glamour of personal contact with the
Emperor, the Princes and the military chiefs, yielded to the
arguments of military expediency.

The one force in Germany which ultimately decides every great
question, except the fate of its own head, is the Great General
Staff.

On one side of the Koenigs-Platz, in