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 116 many—and elsewhere, in France, for instance. It can almost be said that militarism is the creator and preserver of our oppressive, unjust system of indirect taxation. The entire tariff and taxation system of the Empire, which amounts to a squeezing-out of the masses, i. e., the great needy mass of our population, and to which is due, for example, that in 1906 the cost of living for the mass of the people rose by no less than from 10 to 15 percent, as against the average for the period from 1900 to 1904, not only benefits the junkers (that parasitic class so tenderly cared for, very largely for militaristic reasons), but serves in the first line militaristic purposes. It is no less mainly the fault of militarism if our system of communication, the development and perfection of which is especially to the greatest advantage of a sensible capitalism equipped with a shrewd understanding of its interests, does not by far meet the demands of traffic and technical progress, but is used as a milch-cow for a special indirect taxation of the people. The story of the Stengel bill on imperial finances ought to make even a blind man see. It