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Show WHAT GERMANY WILL BE. Germany will remain German. There will be no sreat change, whatever what-ever the government may be democracy, democ-racy, autocracy 01 plain Bolshtil: This is the opinion of an American who has traveled through the German I provinces in the past three monthp. In reporting what hp found, thf Amer ican said The shoemaker was piecing together an "ersatz" sole out of bits of wood and leather. His mouth was full of tarks and he looked like every other shoemaker I have ever seen, sitting in a cubbyhole of a shop and pounding rhythmically on h- soles of strange shoes from morning until night. The shoemaker's wife came waddling through a door almost too small for her. "Ebert was elected president of Germany," Ger-many," I said to the shoemaker "Did you read about It in the paper?" I "Yes." he said, and went on pounding pound-ing on the eole of a shoe. "A few months aco a kaiser ruled Germany," I said, "and now a harness maker with a pug nose has taken his place " "Yes," said the shoemaker. He raised a pair of small, deepset eyes and stared at me from under heavy brows Then, preparing his mouth for another handful of tacks, he added. "It makes no difference who is ruler of Germany I will always be a shoemaker." shoe-maker." The shoemaker had put into words the thing I had found in Berlin since the day I arrived. What the shoemaker said explained to me the reason there had been no revolution, the reason that a handful of police and a ragbag regiment of volunteers had been sufficient suffi-cient to date to keep in check an unemployed, un-employed, disgruntled and embittered population. A lack of interest In their I destiny had enabled the German people peo-ple for four and a half years to play the role of world conquerors. Now the ! same stoical lack of interest characterizes character-izes their attitude toward the new Germany, the new ' freedom" and the new government. The night of Ebert's election I was in a moving picture theater, The news of the election results at Weimar was' flashed on the sereen. No applause , greeted it. N one. so far as I could rfee, appeared to pay any attention to it The audience stared at. the bulle-tlon bulle-tlon with the same detached air that they gave the corset shop "ad" which preceded it and the cabaret announce- i ment which followed. The next day I spoke to a dozen or so Germans about tho event. Fully half of them were unaware of It and not one revealed any enthusiasm or regret, I found the same indifference toward to-ward the Hohenzollern of yesterday. Surrounded by the symbols, slogans. I eagles, architecture and paraphernalia Of William's disastrous rule, Ihe Ber- liners at last, one would think, woul I j occasionally call their one time deml- god to mind and discuss him one way l or another. Yet the German people sit In restaurants, attend theaters walk through streets In which tbe-i flamboyant prints, statues and testimonials testi-monials of the once powerful William j slill survive without ever a thought or word that can be detected for mom- J ory of their one time war lord. If Is not that they have deliberately deliberate-ly blotted him out of their conscious-1 ness. I'nlike Hip Latins, the Germans do not live in the past; unlike the: Americans, they do not Inhabit furiously furious-ly the present, and, unlike the peopl i IS general, their imagination is undisturbed undis-turbed by the future. Yesterday they were fighting and dying by thousands at Verdun; today they are eating the sour black bread of defeat and a wan Ing the decrees of their vanquishers. And It is all the same. My shoemaker beckoned to his wife "Wrap these up." he said. We had been talking, or at least I had been talking, about bblshCTiSm j and freedom and the ex kaist l "Ves." the shoemaker said at least, ' ihe war was a mistake, and killing Liebknecht was a mistake, and maybt Ebert is a mistake The onlv thing Is not to make any mistake fixing shoes. I never bother about anything else." I approached the counter behind which the shoemaker worked to take my package from his wife. Looking over the counter, I saw that the shoemaker, shoe-maker, who worked from morning until un-til night pounding on the soles of strange shoes, wore no shoes himself His legs had both been cut off at the knees. As I was leaving the shop his wife waddled beside me. At the door sho plucked my arm and whispered, "Look." From her ample bosom she had extracted a black Iron cross "He got it at Verdun," said the shoemaker's shoe-maker's wife, "wheer his legs are. Good day, come again." oo |