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found north of the Tweed. It is a liberal education for anyone interested in the game to watch the standard of play on some of the open links in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and other large towns.

At the present moment golf, like many other sports, is at a lower ebb in England than it was prior to 1914, owing to the terrible number of young men of promise who paid the supreme price for their devotion to their country.

It is earnestly to be hoped that before long it may be found possible to have annual matches between the amateurs of the two great English-speaking races; and such meetings could only be for the benefit of the game.

It is quite open to question whether the existing code should not be modified and condensed considerably, so that clubs might be able to adapt the local rules to suit their own particular difficulties. In such a complex game as golf there must, of course, be very large differences of opinion, and it would therefore seem to be advisable not to overload the general code with a mass of detail. The politics of the game, however, is a matter quite outside the scope of this article.

The game of golf has stretched out into almost every country where Englishmen and Scotchmen and Americans reside, and at the present moment it is making rapid strides in France and Belgium and other parts of Europe. There are some fine players in Australia, and some fine links there; and undoubtedly with their climate and their natural ability for playing games, Australians will one day take a high place among the players of the golfing world.

The tendency with regard to the game at the present moment, so far as courses are concerned, is more in the direction of making them interesting rather than of making them of abnormal length. This is really extremely important, because it is quite certain that, if the courses are to be made correspondingly long, to match the increase in ability to strike the ball abnormal distances and to conform with the improvement both in the ball and in the manufacture of clubs, they would have to be so long that it would be impossible to play two rounds a day on them; and it would become to the rank and file, who, after all, keep the game alive, a toil rather than a pleasure to play even one round on a course of, say, eight thousand yards in length.

BY HENRI DE MAN

[We have previously published articles by Mr. de Man, whose perfect command of French, German, and English, and extended residence in Germany and the United States as well as his native country, qualify him to write from a cosmopolitan standpoint. He was an editorial writer on a German newspaper before the war; he fought the Germans as a Belgian officer; and he served on an important Belgian commission in this country during the last stages of that conflict.]

From Le Peuple, June 11, 13, 14, 15
(BELGIAN OFFICIAL SOCIALIST Daily)

I HAVE just spent eight days in Germany, in connection with a lecture which I delivered in Berlin. It was the first time I had been in that country since June, 1914.

Before visiting Berlin and the Ruhr, where I had appointments with labor leaders, I spent three days incognito, talking with what the English call the man-on-the-street, conversing with chance acquaintances in the country, in the city, on the railways, in restaurants, and in shops. I was careful not to reveal my nationality. I bring away a general impression of the German mentality to-day based quite as much on these chance meetings as on the formal declarations of the responsible statesmen and labor leaders whom I saw afterward.

The impression that Germany makes upon an observer like myself, who knew it intimately and loved many of its traits and qualities before the war, is somewhat depressing. A man who visits the country as a conqueror, who rejoices to see his adversary impoverished, demoralized, and humiliated, would perhaps receive more pleasure than I did from such a visit. That was not the spirit in which I went to Germany, much reason as I had to be gratified over the crushing of German militarism. That is something I have always fought and abhorred; but I have never been embittered against the rank and file of

the German nation. I preserved many old friendships with individuals in that country throughout the terrible test of the war. I owe that nation much that is best in my own intellectual training. In a word, I still profess myself a citizen of the world, of a world larger than any narrow fatherland. But even if this were not so, I cannot conceive how Europe can continue to exist with one of its great nations crushed, hopeless, and exposed to universal contempt and hatred.

What impressed me in Germany was the universal evidence of great suffering, great weariness, and great despair. What is worst of all, those suffer most who merit it least. The upper classes, which have known little real privation, preserve their pre-war mentality practically intact. They seem to have learned nothing and to have forgotten nothing. But the common people, especially wage-earners, have had to bear all the terrible consequences of defeat and blockade, of social disorganization, and of the demoralization inseparable from such conditions. The vast social machine, perhaps the most perfectly organized in the world before the war, still runs haltingly; but it seems ready to succumb at the slightest shock. One is surprised that it still goes at all. The wealthy, the profiteers, la jeunesse dorée, are steeped in dissipation. But the great majority, those who earn

their bread by the sweat of their brow, seem callous with the stupor of despair. Nothing betrays this better than the vogue of pessimistic literature. One of the most widely circulated works is Spengler's The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization. This erudite tome of six hundred pages, costing sixty marks, has already passed through twentytwo editions! Book-dealers with whom I conversed told me that a volume needed only to bear a title suggesting decadence, pessimism, or final catastrophe, to find an unlimited market. In a little railway bookstall I counted the titles displayed. There was not a single book about the war. Twenty per cent were classics, forty-five per cent modern novels, and thirty-five per cent sensational popular volumes bearing such titles as The End of the World, The Twilight of Europe, The Destruction- all indicating the morbid taste of a nation seeking to feed its despair.

The very aspect of the crowds betrays the weariness which follows an excessive nervous effort too long sustained. People walk and move about as if they did so merely as a matter of habit; as if they were carrying a burden. Their gestures are automatic. Another sign of fatigue is the universal irritability, the disposition to quarrel - much more observable than in Belgium.

In many respects the Berlin of to-day reminds me of Petrograd as I saw it just after the March Revolution of 1917; only there is much less intensity in Germany. One observes in the latter country a certain sobriety and discipline which Russia never possessed.

During my four days' travel from the frontier to Berlin, I saw but a single military uniform. However, the uniforms of the Security Police are visible everywhere. These have replaced the local police since the revolution. They are so numerous in the workingmen's quarters of Berlin, that you have al

most the impression of being under a state of siege. One evening I counted two policemen for every block. They seem to be necessary on account of the general insecurity and increase of crime. In some parts of Berlin daylight robberies and assaults in the open street are not uncommon. For this reason policemen almost invariably go about in couples, and well armed. Most of them are veterans and a majority wear the Iron Cross.

I noticed more Reichswehr soldiers in Berlin than in the western part of the country. However, I understand that most of its hundred thousand men are garrisoned in the eastern provinces. In spite of that, you do not see one military uniform in Berlin where you saw twenty before the war.

men

Naturally, I did not include former army uniforms, which are still being worn by a great number of men who have been demobilized for more than two years. I should say that one third of the male laborers in Germany still wear old uniforms, which is obviously no indication of prosperity. One finds the most bizarre combinations clothed half in military and half in civilian garb: for instance, corduroy trousers, with khaki tunic and a jockeycap. During my eight days I must have seen at least three hundred men who had no shirts. Some of them wore cravats around their bare throats. Curiously enough, I noticed many people in Berlin wearing parts of British uniforms, doubtless procured from old prison camps. At least three fourths of the children in the workingmen's quarters of Berlin have no shoes and stockings.

More of the men who were entirely clothed in uniform were beggars than were soldiers. The first three men in field-gray whom I met in Berlin were crippled veterans asking alms. Certainly this is not a spectacle calculated to promote militarism among the masses.

The common people, particularly the working-classes, exhibit a profound lassitude and a disgust with anything that recalls the old military régime. No special consideration is shown for warcripples, in spite of the exhortations of the press. People exhibit a repugnance at the sight of these unfortunates, who recall so vividly the horrors of the war. Another symptom of sentiment. Although Iron Crosses were distributed as liberally in Germany as similar decorations in France or Belgium, I could count on my fingers the civilians whom I saw wearing them. The few who did so were middle-class gentlemen, apparently former officers. Working-people seemed to consider it bad form to display them.

Traveling first- and second-class on the railway, I fell in with people of upper rank. In the third-and fourth-class I met workingmen and peasants. The situation in Upper Silesia became acute while I was on my trip. Everyone was talking about it. In the first- and second-class compartments, where I met many government officials and former officers, I heard nothing but imprecations against the victorious powers, and lamentations over the decadence of Germany. Beyond doubt, militarist and nationalist ideals are just as strong as ever among those people. In the third-class compartments, and above all in the fourth-class, where I met workingmen going to and returning from work, an entirely different spirit prevailed. When the war was mentioned, faces hardened and the men began to criticize bitterly the old government. When reparations were discussed, the usual observation was: 'We've got to pay; we understand that. But why do we poor men who suffered most from the war, and never wanted war, and only fought because we were forced to, or deceived, have to foot the bills? We are worse off than ever, while our em

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ployers and the wealthy classes, who are really at fault, are growing richer than ever. Let the rich men pay!'

I was struck by the fact that the man most frequently mentioned when such conversations were going on was Hugo Stinnes.

One evening I chanced to be at a village inn, where I sat at dinner next to a workingman who had fought in Belgium. When he learned that I was in the Belgian army, he began to recall his experiences at the front. We discovered that on several occasions we had been face to face in the same sector. On comparing notes, we were both struck to find how similar our impressions were. In a word, we had endured the same hardships and experiences and the same pleasures, under practically identical conditions. It was the same kind of life in the same country. Our trenchstories, sad or humorous, were strangely alike. After we had conversed an hour like this, it suddenly occurred to me that we were talking exactly as if we were old comrades, and that we seemed to have forgotten entirely that we had been on opposite sides.

Some arm-chair patriots may feel outraged at this; but men who actually fought and suffered in the war will understand. They will understand better still if they will try to recall a certain sentiment of solidarity which prevailed among the combatants of both sides in the height of the struggle. At that time all the world seemed divided into two parts. These were not the Central Powers and the Allies, but the front and the country in the rear. We were a sort of community, in the battle-line, bound to each other across our barriers and defenses by our common suffering and labor, and isolated by a sort of resentment from the rest of the world, which was not sharing our dangers and hardships.

And I was surprised by a remark volunteered by the man with whom I

talked, when we separated. He said that universal peace would be a fact, if the men who make the wars were forced to fight personally as common soldiers in the trenches.

The first subject I wanted to discuss when I met my old pre-war Social-Democrat friend, Hermann Müller, at the headquarters of the party in Berlin, was militarism. Müller is unquestionably the person best qualified to speak for his party on this subject. He is not a man of personal magnetism, a great master of the mob, like Bebel and many other Socialist pioneers. He is not even a fluent speaker. His leadership is due to the confidence which the people have in his sound judgment and honesty. I accompanied Herman Müller to Paris on our tragic journey of conciliation, the first day of August, 1914, and returned with him that night to Brussels, where I bade him farewell at the Northern Railway station almost at the very moment when the German ultimatum reached my government. Our old friendship and our associations during those two tragic days made us friends again, in spite of our estrangement since the beginning of the war.

We spent several hours together, discussing questions in which I was particularly interested. He told me that the old spirit of monarchical and military Germany survived, but that it now constituted a threat to democracy in Germany itself, rather than to foreign countries. The working-classes of Germany are quite as interested as are France and Belgium in securing the complete disarmament of the country. He believes that the Reichswehr has really been reduced to one hundred thousand men. He denied that these troops were composed largely of exofficers so as to afford a skeleton for a new army several times its size. Inspired by natural fear lest this organization might become a breeding-place

of counter-revolution, the new authorities have preferred as recruits younger men, taken for the most part from the casual laboring classes. These young fellows have no special interest or sympathy with militarism. This confirmed my personal observations. I was struck by the inferior quality of the Reichswehr personnel, so far as I was able to observe it. The members appeared to be under-nourished youths, who had resorted to this occupation because they were unemployable in better trades. Müller accounted for the large quantity of arms still concealed among the people by the declining respect for law and authority. Beyond doubt there are still great quantities of rifles, machine-guns, hand-grenades, and here and there a few field-guns, concealed at various points. Müller himself was greatly surprised at the quantity of arms which came to light among the radicals at the time of the Communist revolution last March. Still, only a small proportion of these arms are in the possession of such extremists.

Müller remarked in this connection: 'We Socialists, whether majority or minority Socialists, have no illusion on this point: with unimportant exception, the arms now concealed in Germany will never be used except against the working-classes. They are a danger to the Republic, and the government knows that its survival may depend upon their being found and turned over to the Allied Commission. That is the only way to put an end to the Orgesh and other irregular formations, which threaten no one but the Socialists, and have no object except to form the nucleus of a reactionary revolt. However, these military societies are not in immediate danger except in Bavaria. Bavaria is a country apart, and only time will show whether the central government will prove strong enough to compel its reactionary authorities to disarm.'

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