Nothing emerges more conspicuously from such news as reaches me
privately from Berlin than the dramatic importance attaching to the life and health of the massive old warrior who fills the office of Reiehsprasident. Hindenburg is, of course, over eighty-five, and the vital fact is not merely that he is the only man in Germany for whom a popular vote has been cast, or that he can legislate under Article 48 of the 'Weimer Constitution by emergency, decree, regardless of the Reichstag, but • that under the same constitution if the President should die the Chancellor for the time being fills his place till a new elee- tion can take place. That means that at the present moment succession to the ChanCellorshiP is - almost like a kind of exalted musical chairs, for everything may depend on who happens to be in the chair when the critical moment comes. As a matter of fact the -President at eighty-five seems to be in better health than most men half -his age. But the span of human -life is limited and in this. case the limit cannot by the nature of things he far distant.
Previous page
