it. As I am a known warm friend of
Russia he could not say Russia began it. His mind turned to a more
obscure nation.

"To think that Europe should thus have been ruined and all those
millions of lives lost," said he. "Just for stupid little Serbia."

I am afraid I could not agree to that. The devil began it. What does
it matter now? Nobody cares. The present and the future hold the
potentialities of happiness rather than the past. To discuss the past
you'd have to raise the dead on both sides.

England is not interested in history, but she is interested in
actuality.

Mr. Lloyd George has said that the German is not being taxed by his
Government in the proportion that the British are taxed by theirs--far
from it. Figures have been given in the Press. And they have not been
refuted by Germans. The Germans hold that they are being taxed so
heavily that a maximum has been reached. W----, who was well-off
before the war, has lost his income now, has taken a staff-post at the
Ministry of Trade and gets 20,000 marks a year. He ought to pay a
heavy income-tax on that. Yes, but it is only eighty pounds a year in
English money, and he has a wife and two children to keep on it. There
are tens of thousands of professional men in the same plight. Some of
the very rich arrange matters to avoid some of the heavy dues. And as
regards the working-class, it is notoriously hard to raise money from
them by direct taxation.

"Then it is said that you are running your railway and postal services
at a loss. And that is obviously true. England has raised her rates
and made her public pay. She thinks Germany should also."

To this it is replied that Germany does not believe in obstructing the
ready movement of people and of intelligence in her country. She
thinks it bad policy to charge highly for railway fares and letter
postage. What is gained by extra charges is more than lost through
business being hampered.

"These are points which you educated Germans should elucidate through
the British Press," said I. "The idea that Germany escapes taxation is
a very unfavourable one in England. It is much more important than the
rights or wrongs of the old war."

W----, who receives the "Nation" regularly, nevertheless did not think
any English paper would print what he might write on the theme.

I visited, among others, Herr Baumfelder, the editor of the "European
Press," once dropped from aeroplanes among our lin