A Grand Old Enigma.

Although, in order to explain the issues, the cabled views of German Republican papers have been given above, there is yet no proof that the President has deserted the Republic. If for the moment he deserts the Reichstag, it may be that he is minded solely or mainly to secure by semi-absolutism a foreign policy that he cannot secure from a divided Reichstag or from party groups. The fact that Hindenburg, in his war book, denounced the enforced abdication of “my All Highest,” and the fact that he has swung from monarchism to republicanism and from Left to Right, does not prove a somersault back to Hohenzollernism; it may simply mean that he will use any weapon—from Streseman to Hitler—to safeguard his main concern, German unity. That unity is said to be the old man's sacred charge. Even Wagnerian opera can hardly point to a more fateful figure.