tain that the possible
attitude of the German Socialists--who were thought by some writers to
number somewhere in the neighbourhood of two million--in regard to the
War at its outset greatly exercised the minds of Junkerdom and the
Chancellor. A few days after the declaration of War a well-known English
Socialist said to us, "I believe that the Socialists will be strong
enough greatly to handicap Germany in the carrying on of the War, and
possibly, if she meets with reverses in the early stages, to bring about
Peace before Christmas."

That was in August, 1914, and we are now well on in the Spring of 1916.
We reminded the speaker that on a previous occasion, when Peace still
hung in the balance, he had declared with equal conviction that there
would be no War because "the Socialists are now too strong in Germany
not to exercise a preponderating restraining influence." He has proved
wrong in both opinions. And one can well imagine that the Junker class
admires Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg for the astute manner in which
he has succeeded in shepherding the German Socialist sheep for the
slaughter, and in muzzling their representatives in the Reichstag.

CLIVE HOLLAND.

[Illustration: THE JUNKER

"What I have most admired in you, Bethmann, is that you have made
Socialists our best supporters."]

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"MILIEU DE FANTOMES TRISTES ET SANS NOMBRE"

There is something daunting, even to the mind of one not guilty of war
or of massacres, in the thought of multitudes: the multitude of the
dead, of the living, of one generation of men since there have been men
on earth. And war brings this horror to us daily, or rather nightly,
because such great companies of men have suddenly died together, passing
in comradeship and community from the known to the unknown. Yet dare we
say "together?" The unparalleled solitariness and singleness of death is
not altered by the general and simultaneous doom of battle.

And it is with the multitude, and all the _ones_ in it, that the maker
of war is in unconscious relation. He does not know their names, he does
not know them by any kind of distinction, he knows them only by
thousands. Yet every one with a separate life and separate death is in
conscious relation with _him_, knows him for the tyrant who has taken
his youth, his hope, his love, his fatherhood.

What a