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64 desire, can subordinate the means of communication, which they have monopolised, to the interests of their real estate business. To be convinced of the reasonableness of such a conjecture, we need only recall that the Metropolitan Company was founded with the help of one of the great banks. This company's interests are associated with those of the financial house in its land transactions. Its Eastern line, in fact, was going to open up lands belonging to the bank, who sold them, of course, later on, when the completion of the railway was a certainty, making fabulous profits on its own account and enriching certain private members."

A monopoly, once it is formed, and when it once controls thousands of millions, penetrates inevitably into every part of public life, quite apart from political circumstances and all other considerations. The economic literature of Germany usually praises the integrity of the Prussian bureaucracy, while alluding to the scandals usual in France and to American corruption. But the fact is that the bourgeois literature of Germany devoted to banking matters constantly has to go beyond the field of purely banking operations, and to speak, for instance, of "the attraction exercised by financial houses" in reference to the more and more frequent passing of officials into the employ of the banks. "How can one vouch for the integrity of a State official who is aspiring in his inmost heart, to a modest position in the Bernstrasse"? (the street in Berlin in which is situated the head office of the Deutsche Bank). The director of Die Bank, Alfred Lansburg, wrote in 1909 an article on the Economic Meaning of Byzantinism, chiefly devoted to William II.'s