Thirty million Germans are voting today to elect the President of the Reich; as G. Hervé wrote, no one dares speak of the German Republic.

It appears, in fact, that the candidate with the greatest chance of being elected in the second round is Mr. Jarres, the mayor of Duisburg, who is celebrated everywhere as the man who resisted the French.
Mr. Jarres is the candidate of the right, that is, of the populists, the nationalists, and even some of the racists. He is supported by all the industrialists, by all the major Protestant landowners. He is also considered the Monk of the German Revolution, the man who will pave the way for the restoration of the Hohenzollerns.
It is unlikely that Mr. Jarres will be elected today. He is expected to come out on top of all the candidates, but with around ten million votes; That is to say, still quite far from an absolute majority.
Mr. Jarres's candidacy has reversed the chances that Mr. Marx, the former Catholic chancellor with democratic leanings, might have had in the past.
He will probably only obtain around four million votes.
The constitutional parties that should have united to fight Mr. Jarres are going into battle in disarray.
Thus, Mr. Marx has a like-minded competitor in Mr. Held, President of the Bavarian Council, who is, however, more inclined than he is toward the monarchy.
Finally, the democrats who could have joined the center have as their representative Mr. Hellpach, a respected scholar, but who has no chance of success. It is true that the rabid racists have indeed presented Ludendorff, the pitiful loser of 1918, the man of failed coups, but these fanatics cannot play a significant role in the battle, any more than the Communists, though they are more numerous.
The candidate who is likely to garner the greatest number of votes after Mr. Jarres is Mr. Otto Braun, the Socialist candidate.
So far, it is unlikely that the left and center parties will unite behind him in the second round to defeat Mr. Jarres.
It is also unlikely that the Socialists will rally behind Mr. Marx's candidacy for the same purpose.
The leaders' decisions would not necessarily be followed.
The election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage always brings formidable surprises: the election of Louis Bonaparte was proof of this in our country. We would be wrong to hope that the German Republic can be strengthened by the election of its new president.
On the contrary, everything leads us to fear a new shift in favor of the men of revenge and restoration.

EUGENE SAILLARD.