The death of Herr Hugo Stinnes occurred by a strange_
coincidence but one day after the publication of the Dawes Committee Report, and thus if the Report marks the beginning of a new period of European affairs Stinnes' career ends exactly with those four strange, transitional years between the Armistice and the new epoch. During those four years he came to the zenith of his power, and it was essentially the chaotic conditions of the time that gave him his great opportunity. He was essentially a narrow man, only able to use his opportunities for money- making in the narrowest sense of the word. He seems never really to have sought nyiney for the power it brings ; only power for the r oney it brought. He Controlled anything up to sixty newspapers and had a whole political party at his beck and call. But as he had no real political motives he did nothing with them except to enrich himself. A strange, semi-barbarous, remarkable man—he may go down to history as a type of the post-War world, with its feverish activity, its lack of direction, its ignorance of ultimate aim.
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