A counter-protest against this policy of wholesale =taxa- tion has
been presented to the German Chancellor by a group of eighty-two intellectual(' and politicians. The signatories declare that Germany did not enter the war with the intention of making conquests, but to maintain her existence, and that on the conclusion of peace Germany must not seek anything that does not secure these objects. They therefore feel it their duty to oppose the policy of annexation with all their energy, and express their conviction that its realization would be a serials political error, and would not strengthen but fatally weaken the German Empire. They uphold the principle that the incorporation or annexation of peoples politically autonomous or accustomed to autonomy is to be condemned as incompatible with the fundamental features of the creation of the Empire.
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