When we look at these figures we cannot help reflecting
that they might have been a great deal worse. Although it had been foreseen, as we have said, thatithe Nationalist candidate would be first, no one ventured to predict what -kind of majority he would have. The whole election was , leap in the dark. As the first German President was appointed by the Weimir Assembly there had never been a Presidential election till last Sunday, and there was no evidence whatever for forming estimates of strength. As there is practically universal suffrage for both sexes over the age of twenty-one, the constituencies were too large to be scientifically canvassed. For our part, we had a dread that the harassing treatment which the Germans had received under French administration, and particularly in the Ruhr Valley, might cause the flood of passion and defiant hatred, which had been stemmed of late, to well up again at the Presidential election and find expression in a huge Nationalist majority. That has not happened, and we may be thankful for it. If there had been real fanaticism it might easily have attached itself to General Ludendorff, but the vote for him was laughably small.
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