THE REVOLUTIONS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17948, 15 November 1918, Page 4

THE REVOLUTIONS.

The report that a revolution has been accomplished in the Netherlands and a republic proclaimed is apparently quite definite, but it may have been only a too-early anticipation of events, guessed at by some enterprising correspondent. Great events develop so very suddenly and unexpectedly nowadays, however, that almost any sen■yttional political report may find credence. And revolutions,, as history shows, are terribly infections troubles. There was a great revolutionary epidemic in Kurope seventy years ago that affected virtually every country of the Central, Western and Southern Continent. It started in Paris apparently without the slightest warning in q 'little mild demonstration against an unpopular Minister, and in a couple of days it had scattered a Royal family over Europo and established a new republic. Italy, Austria, Hungary, .Bohemia, Spain and Portugal, Holland and most of the German States all felt the influence of the same tremendous wave, but in Germany the people allowed themselves to be bullied into submission. If Germany had given rein to her ambition for liberty in 1848 there could scarcely have been a world-war in 1914. She is making up now for the earlier omission, it may be, but satisfactory as the signs are there is no certain permanence about the reforms that are being achieved. There are more than a score of Royal Houses in German States, and taking all their laterals and collaterals into consideration there cannot be fewer than five ihundred princes and princelings, dukes and other highnesses absolutely maintained .in idleness at the expense of the German people. Now all this mass of parasitism had to justify itself in some way and the " service" it rendered Germany was to give "tone" to military service. It existed for and by the military system. Its love of power and of display equally depended on the efficiency of the military machine. If the German people sweep out the whole tribe of professional princes they will not have squelched militarism, it is true, bub they will havo deprived militarism of its mainstay and its excuse. Aud they seem to have made a fair beginning with the job. Of the larger States. Prussia. Saxony, Wurttemburg, Mecklenburg and Hesse are said already to have got rid of their rulers, and there must be others following in the. right path. At any rate if -the Americans can assist 'in such a movement they 'will not allow any false sentiment to deter them, and just at the moment American influence probably counts for a good deal in Germany. The difficulty will be to stop the revolutionary movement now that it 'has begun. Bloodler.s revolutions have had a habit of leading to the delayed development of terrible disorders, anc\ it will need all the self-discipline of tho German people to keep the present confusion from drifting horribly into civil War. There must be in the background somewhere a great group of bitterly disappointed followers of the various court*, and this group would not hesitate to take advantage of the confusion to carry out a great coup d'etat. It is against such a development that Germany has most to be on her guard while she is endeavouring to reach salvation by way of democracy.