"Master of Coke"

Herr Hugo Stinnes, reputed richer than Henry Ford, goaded by attacks, replied to his enemies in the columns of his newspaper Die Allgemeine Zeitung:

"The hounding by the press of the Left, including the Democratic papers, and also the Centrist Germania, has assumed forms which make it seem worthwhile for me, too, to clear up the events of last week for outsiders whom evidently it was sought to lead astray."

He stated that Germany's economic life was threatened and that under existing circumstances there was no place for a tax on coal. After stating why the first Stresemann Government failed, he remarked: " I go on record that what the alleged ' Stinnes dictatorship' wanted, corresponded to the views of the Chancellor and the whole Reichstag faction of the German People's Party in the first half of last week, but kept free from the vacillating and confusion of the last few days."

He then accused Herr Bernhardt, editor of Die Vossiche Zeitung, Sinnes' chief tormenter, of borrowing his own ideas and then " tendentiously, falsely and fraudulently misrepresenting them."

He concluded his defense thus:

" Germany's life is in acute danger; it is a matter of life or death for a large part of the German people. Experiments are out of place. Therefore it is doubly regrettable that it was not possible to win over those men [to enter the Government] who would have been relatively certain to guarantee the immediate carrying through unconditionally of necessary reforms."

Herr Stinnes lives with his wife and sons in a single apartment in the Hotel Adlon in Berlin. The inmates of the hotel say of him: " There goes Stinnes! By the time he gets to his floor he will have made another million dollars."