Class feeling soon increased.  The poor began to call the rich agrarians “usurers.”  The Government forbade socialistic papers such as the Vorwaerts to use the word “usurer” any more, because it was applied to the powerful junkers.  Such papers as the Tagliche Rundschau and the Tageszeitung could continue to use it, however, for they applied it to the small shopkeeper who exceeded the maximum price by a fraction of a penny.

As the rigour of the blockade increased, the discontent of the small minority who were beginning to hate their own Government almost as much as, and in many cases more, than they hated enemies of Germany, assumed more threatening forms than mere discussion.  Their disillusionment regarding Germany’s invincibility opened their eyes to faults at home.  Some of the extreme Social Democrats were secretly spreading the treasonable doctrine that the German Government was not entirely blameless in the causes of the war.  It has been my custom to converse with all classes of society, and I was amazed at the increasing number of disgruntled citizens.

But the German Government is still determined to have unity.  They had enlisted the services of editors, reporters, professors, parsons and cinema operators to create it; they are now giving the police an increasingly important role to maintain it.

As the German Parliament in no way resembles the British Parliament, so do the German, police in no way resemble the British police.  The German police, mounted or unmounted, are armed with a revolver, a sword, and not infrequently provided with a machine-gun.  They have powers of search and arrest without warrant.  They are allowed at their discretion to strike or otherwise maltreat not only civilians, but soldiers.  Always armed with extraordinary power, their position during the past few months has risen to such an extent that the words used in the Reichstag, “The Reign of Terror,” are not an exaggeration.

Aided and even abetted by a myriad of spies and agents-provocateurs, they have placed under what is known as “preventive arrest” throughout the German Empire and Austria so great a number of civilians that the German prisons, as has been admitted, are filled to repletion.

With the Reichstag shut up, and the hold on the newspapers tightening,-what opportunity remains by which independent thought can be disseminated?

In Poland meetings to consider what they call “Church affairs,” but which were really revolutionary gatherings, afforded opportunity for discussion.  These have been ruled out of order.

The lectures taking place in their thousands all over Germany might afford a chance of expression of opinion, but the professors, like the pastors, are, as I have said, so absolutely dependent upon the Government for their position and promotion, that I have only heard of one of them who had the temerity to make any speech other than those of the “God-punish-England” and “We-must-hold-out” type.  His resignation from the University of Munich was immediately demanded, and any number of sycophants were ready to take his place.