The first effort of the revolution further east in Russia, Hungary and the Baltic States has been to "socialise" land. Either, where the agricultural industry is primitive, as in Russia, by simply dividing up the land among the peasants, or where it is progressive, as in the model-farm estates of Hungary, by putting the estate under control of a council of workers as though it was a factory. But in Germany the urban character of the revolution, which has accounted for the comparative ease with which the Government have coerced it, is shown by land tenure being as yet little affected. The only definite action against the large landed estates, that I know of, is a measure of the Prussian Assembly postponing action until 1921. This characteristic procrastination is, of course, explained to the revolutionaries as merely allowing a short period for voluntary breaking up of the big estates, and to the reactionaries as a postponement of all action. Meantime financial conditions in Germany are quite as favourable to the dispersal of large estates as with us; for wherever the farming system obtains the farmers have made even larger fortunes in Germany than in England. But the system of landed tenure is much more varied in Germany. There is a large proportion of freeholders and copyholders, while big estates are farmed by bailiffs with hired labourers.
In the region of these big estates--the land of the Junker (Mecklenburg, Pomerania and Brandenburg)--the revolution is openly defied. The agrarians of these regions not long ago had a regular trial of strength with the present _régime_, and though worsted were none the worse.
The strength of the German revolution is in labour, its weakness is in the land.
[C] The advertisement columns of the daily papers, those most trustworthy of documents, told many a tale of distress. Here is one such advertisement:--
"Valuable violin--Antonius Stradivarius Cremonentis, authentic, will exchange for provisions: meat, sugar preferred."
But it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and if it blows away the family heirloom it blows off the mortgage on the family property:--
"Summer holidays in peace and plenty. Farmhouse in Harz mountains will receive family and provide them with farm produce, milk, butter, eggs, etc., in return for redemption of mortgage of 10,000 marks."