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are being hurriedly printed, Herr Stresemann, after a speech on the “age of revolutions” (to Berlin journalists on September 7), has again put on his dictator’s mask. On September 8, an extraordinary decree appeared on the confiscation of foreign currency and securities. Its terms temporar-ily
suspend articles 115, 117 and 153 of the constitution (inviolability of goods, residences and the mail). A high commissioner has been given the most extensive powers to confiscate foreign currency that has been held without permission. The confiscation of all property and long prison sentences will be imposed on those who resist the law. The rich must put the interests of the homeland first! Are you satisfied, proletarian? Just to please you, we have even struck a great knife-blow at the constitution…
    Immune from confiscation are foreign currency and banknotes held for commercial and industrial purposes, those necessary for companies operating in Germany, those belonging to people normally resident abroad or to people who receive them “by virtue of moral obligations.” Very good. But then which currency can be confiscated? What speculator is such an imbecile that he cannot invoke—with documents to back him up—commercial and industrial necessities in addition to the highest moral obligations?
    At the very most this decree will enable the government to rob a few unfortunate holders of small amounts of currency, to assist some shady stock exchange vendettas, and to foster a demagogic agitation around some prosecutions which will be useful to citizen Hilferding.

A truth of Herr Stinnes
    Under no obligation to cultivate the bluff of the taxation measures introduced by Stresemann and Hilferding, the journalists getting paid by Stinnes are continuing their direct campaign against the working class.
    Under the headline “Truth,” an “important figure writing anonymously” recently stated in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (leading article of September 8) that “to claim that Germany can be rescued from its current dangerous situation by taxing the propertied
classes is a lie.” For the truth is that “the German people must work at least two hours more, with at least the same intensity as before the war.” In so many words.
    This is the viewpoint of business circles who don’t want to pay. Their resistance to taxes is growing, taking on varied aspects. On September 3 and 4, Berlin markets were completely out of butter and fats. The landowners in Herr Helfferich’s party 107 don’t want to sell them for paper money and are thus showing the government their disapproval of its taxation policy. The Bavarian industrialists are protesting against the new tax laws. The Saxon farmers too. In Bavaria, the whole of public opinion has been mobilized to this end. We should remember that the taxes on capital whose repeal they are demanding were voted for under Cuno on the eve of the last general strike in an atmosphere of growing anxiety. When the factory committees grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, the German bourgeoisie shouted out: “All right, I’ll pay.” But citizens Hilferding and Severing have soothed its fears. It is tightening its purse strings once more. It has lost sight of the fact that, despite being sometimes legally dissolved, the factory committees are nonetheless a little stronger every day.

Journeys
    Herr Stresemann has gone to exchange compliments with Herr von Knilling, head of the pro-fascist Bavarian government. Herr Hitler, the Bavarian sub-Mussolini, the most competent person to organize the next fascist coup, has come unhindered to Berlin to confer with the nationalist orator Reinhold Wulle. Herr Stinnes and Herr Hindenburg 108 are visiting Ludendorff at his home in Ludwigshöhe (in Bavaria, of course). A reactionary plot is being hatched.

    However, Sedan Day (September 2) 109 has been a defeat for fascism. It didn’t show