And the Kaiser abdicates: The German Revolution November 1918-August 1919

And the Kaiser Abdicates.

PUBLISHED BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

IN MEMORY OF

LIEUTENANT EARL TRUMBULL WILLIAMS

301ST UNITED STATES FIELD ARTILLERY

OF THE CLASS OF 1910 YALE COLLEGE

WHO DIED MAY 7TH 1918

AND THE KAISER
ABDICATES

THE GERMAN REVOLUTION

NOVEMBER 1918—AUGUST 1919

BY S. MILES BOUTON

WITH THE CONSTITUTION OF THE GERMAN

COMMONWEALTH TRANSLATED BY

WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO AND

ARTHUR NORMAN HOLCOMBE

REVISED EDITION

NEW HAVEN

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD : OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

MDCCCCXXI

COPYRIGHT 1920, 1921 BY

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

First published October, 1920.

Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged,

September, 1921.

TO THE

HONORABLE IRA NELSON MORRIS

AMERICAN MINISTER TO SWEDEN

THE MAN, THE DIPLOMAT, AND THE LOYAL

FRIEND, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY

DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR

Contents.

Chapter I. The Governmental Structure of Germany. [17]

Revolutions—Not unknown in Germany—Prussia and the Hohenzollerns—Frederick the Great—Germany under foreign domination—The Battle of the brotherhood of man—Lassalle's national Socialists join the Internationale—Germany's political backwardness—The war of 1870-71—Erection of the German Empire—Why the Reichstag failed to become a real parliament—The Emperor's powers as Kaiser and as King of Prussia.

Chapter II. The German Conception of the State. [31]

Individualism repressed for efficiency's sake—Authority the keynote—The Beamter and his special privileges—Prussian ideals of duty—Education—The Officer corps as supporters of the throne—Militarism—Dreams of a Welt-Imperium—The fatal cancer of Socialism.

Chapter III. Internationalism and Vaterlandslose Gesellen. [45]

The menace of internationalism—Marx and Engels—Socialist teachings of the brotherhood of man—Lassalle's national Socialists join the Internationale of Marx, Engels and Liebknecht—Socialism becomes a political factor—Bismarck's special laws fail—He tries State Socialism—Kaiser Wilhelm denounces the Socialists—Labor-union movement a child of Socialism—German "particularism"—Socialism weakens feelings of patriotism and undermines the church.

Chapter IV. Germany under the "Hunger-Blockade." [61]

Germany's inability to feed and clothe her inhabitants—The war reduces production—Germany's imports in 1913—Food conservation—The "turnip-winter"—Everybody goes hungry—Terrible increase of mortality—Discontent engendered and increased by suffering—Illegitimate trade in the necessaries of life—Rations at the front become insufficient.

Chapter V. Internationalism at Work. [75]

General enthusiasm at the war's outbreak—Socialists support the government—Liebknecht denounces the war—Otto Rühle, Franz Mehring, Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg—The "Spartacus Letters"—Extreme Socialists begin to follow Liebknecht—The first open break in the party—The seceders attack the war—Liebknecht sent to prison—The Russian Revolution as a factor—The political strikes of January, 1918—The army disaffected—Shortage of trained officers.

Chapter VI. Propaganda and Morale. [89]

Submarine losses shake sailors' morale—Independent Socialists' propaganda—Admiral von Cappelle admits serious mutiny at Wilhelmshafen—Haase, Dittmann and Vogtherr denounced—Lenine passes through Germany—Russian Bolshevist propaganda in Germany—Treaty of Brest-Litovsk throws down the bars—Activities of the Bolshevist Ambassador Joffe—Haase, Cohn and other Independent Socialists work with him—Joffe expelled from Germany—Allied propaganda helps weaken German morale at home and on the fronts—Atrocity stories.

Chapter VII. Germany Requests an Armistice. [107]

Chancellor Michaelis resigns and is succeeded by Count Hertling—Empire honeycombed with sedition—Count Lichnowsky's memoirs—Another Chancellor crisis—Socialists consent to enter a coalition government—Bulgaria surrenders—Hertling admits desperateness of situation—The German front begins to disintegrate—Prince Max of Baden becomes Chancellor, with the Socialist Philip Scheidemann as a cabinet member—Max requests an armistice—Lansing's reply.

Chapter VIII. The Last Days of Imperial Germany. [121]

Reforms come too late—The Independent Socialists attack the government—Liebknecht released from prison and defies the authorities—The Kaiser makes sweeping surrenders of powers—Austria-Hungary's defection—Revolution in Vienna—Socialists demand the Kaiser's abdication—The new cabinet promises parliamentary reforms.

Chapter IX. A Revolt Which Became a Revolution. [133]

Mutiny at Kiel—Troops fire on mutinous sailors—Demands of the mutineers granted—Noske arrives—The red flag replaces the imperial standard—Prince Henry's flight—Independent Socialists and Spartacans seize their opportunity—Soviets erected throughout Northwestern Germany—Official cowardice at Swinemünde—Noske becomes Governor of Kiel.

Chapter X. The Revolution Reaches Berlin. [147]

Lansing announces that the allied governments accept Wilson's fourteen points with one reservation—Max appeals to the people—Hamburg revolutionaries reach Berlin—Government troops brought to the capital—Independent Socialists meet in the Reichstag building—The revolution spreads—Majority Socialists join hands with the revolutionaries—Supposedly loyal troops mutiny—Revolution.

Chapter XI. The Kaiser Abdicates. [159]

Ebert becomes Premier for a day—The German Republic proclaimed—Liebknecht at the royal palace—Officers hunted down in the streets—The rape of the bourgeois newspapers by revolutionaries—The first shooting—Ebert issues a proclamation and an appeal—A red Sunday—Revolutionary meeting at the Circus Busch—A six-man cabinet formed—The Vollzugsrat—Far-reaching reforms are decreed.

Chapter XII. "The German Socialistic Republic." [177]

The end of the dynasties—The Kaiser flees—Central Soviet displays moderate tendencies—Wholesale jail-releases—The police disarmed—Die neue Freiheit—A Red Guard is planned, but meets opposition from the soldiers—Liebknecht organizes the deserters—Armistice terms a blow to the cabinet—The blockade is extended.

Chapter XIII. "The New Freedom." [195]

Germany's armed forces collapse—Some effects of "the new freedom"—The Reichstag is declared dissolved—The cabinet's helplessness—Opposition to a national assembly—Radicals dominate the Vollzugsrat—Charges are made against it—The Red Soldiers' League—The first bloodshed under the new régime.

Chapter XIV. The Majority Socialists in Control. [209]

Front soldiers return—The central congress of Germany's Soviets—Radicals in an insignificant minority—A new Vollzugsrat of Majority Socialists appointed—The People's Marine Division revolts—Independent Socialists leave the cabinet—The Spartacus League organized—The national government's authority flouted—Aggressions by Czechs and Poles—An epidemic of strikes.

Chapter XV. Liebknecht Tries to Overthrow the Government; Is Arrested and Killed. [225]

The first Bolshevist uprising—Prominent Berlin newspapers seized by the Spartacans—The Independent Socialists' double-dealing—Capture of the Vorwärts plant—Ledebour, Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg arrested—Liebknecht and Luxemburg killed—The Bolsheviki turn their attention to coast cities.

Chapter XVI. The National Assembly. [237]

Germany's political parties reorganize—Theodor Wolff—Composition of the National Assembly—Convenes at Weimar—Spartacans stage various uprisings—Friedrich Ebert elected provisional president of the German Republic—Germany's desperate financial situation—The difference between theory and practice.

Chapter XVII. The Spartacans Rise Again. [251]

Germany still hungering—Promised supplies of food delayed—Gas and coal shortage—Strikes add to people's sufferings—The Spartacans plan another uprising—Severe fighting in Berlin—The radical newspaper Die rote Fahne suppressed—Independent Socialists go over to the Spartacans—Independent Socialist and Spartacan Platforms contrasted.

Chapter XVIII. Red or White Internationalism: Which? [265]

Radicalism encouraged by Bolshevism's success in Hungary.

Chapter XIX. The Weimar Constitution. [273]

History of the new constitution—An advancedly democratic institution—Important change in constitution on third reading—The imperial constitution ceases to exist—Two "main divisions"—Construction of the state—Preambles of old and new constitutions compared—Fundamental and sweeping changes—Radical curtailment of states' rights—The President—The Reichstag, importance assigned to it—The Reichsrat—Legislative procedure—Referendum and initiative—Amendments—"Fundamental rights and fundamental duties of the Germans"—Articles on social and economic life—Socialist influence becomes unmistakable—Sweeping socialization made possible—Workmen's council is "anchored" in the constitution.

The Constitution of the German Commonwealth. [294]

Translation by William Bennett Munro and Arthur Norman Holcombe. Reprinted by permission of the World Peace Foundation.

Foreword.

The developments leading up to the German Revolution of November, 1918, and the events marking the course of the revolution itself are still but imperfectly known or understood in America. For nearly two years preceding the overthrow of the monarchy, Americans, like the people of all other countries opposing Germany, were dependent for their direct information upon the reports of neutral correspondents, and a stringent censorship prevented these from reporting anything of value regarding the conditions that were throughout this period gradually making the German Empire ripe for its fall. To a great extent, indeed, not only these foreign journalists, but the great mass of the Germans themselves, had little knowledge of the manner in which the Empire was being undermined.

During the crucial days of the revolution, up to the complete overthrow of the central government at Berlin, a sharpened censorship prevented any valuable direct news from being sent out, and the progress of events was told to the outside world mainly by travelers, excited soldiers on the Danish frontier and two or three-day-old German newspapers whose editors were themselves not only handicapped by the censorship, but also ignorant of much that had happened and unable to present a clear picture of events as a whole. When the bars were finally thrown down to enemy correspondents, the exigencies of daily newspaper work required them to devote their undivided attention to the events that were then occurring. Hence the developments preceding and attending the revolution could not receive that careful consideration and portrayal which is necessary if they are to be properly understood.

An attempt is made in this book to make clear the factors and events that made the revolution possible, and to give a broad outline of its second phase, from the middle of November, 1918, to the ratification by Germany of the Peace of Versailles. A preliminary description of Germany's governmental structure, although it may contain nothing new to readers who know Germany well, could not be omitted. It is requisite for a comprehension of the strength of the forces and events that finally overthrew the Kaiser.

Much of the history told deals with matters of which the author has personal knowledge. He had been for several years before the war resident in Berlin as an Associated Press correspondent. He was in Vienna when the Dual Monarchy declared war on Serbia, and in Berlin during mobilization and the declarations of war on Russia and France. He was with the German armies on all fronts during the first two years of the war as correspondent, and was in Berlin two weeks before America severed diplomatic relations with Germany. The author spent the summer of 1917 in Russia, and watched the progress of affairs in Germany from Stockholm and Copenhagen during the winter of 1917-18. He spent the three months preceding the German Revolution in Copenhagen, in daily touch with many proved sources of information, and was the first enemy correspondent to enter Germany after the armistice, going to Berlin on November 18, 1918. He attended the opening sessions of the National Assembly at Weimar in February, 1919, and remained in Germany until the end of March, witnessing both the first and second attempts of the Spartacans to overthrow the Ebert-Haase government.

The author's aim in writing this book has been to give a truthful and adequate picture of the matters treated, without any "tendency" whatever. It is not pretended that the book exhausts the subject. Many matters which might be of interest, but which would hinder the straightforward narration of essentials, have been omitted, but it is believed that nothing essential to a comprehension of the world's greatest political event has been left out.

A word in conclusion regarding terminology.

Proletariat does not mean, as is popularly supposed in America, merely the lowest grade of manual laborers. It includes all persons whose work is "exploited" by others, i. e., who depend for their existence upon wages or salaries. Thus actors, journalists, clerks, stenographers, etc., are reckoned as proletarians.

The bourgeoisie includes all persons who live from the income of investments or from businesses or properties (including real estate) owned by them. In practice, however, owners of small one-man or one-family businesses, although belonging to what the French term the petite bourgeoisie, are regarded as proletarians. The nobility, formerly a class by itself, is now de facto included under the name bourgeoisie, despite the contradiction of terms thus involved.

No effort has been made toward consistency in the spelling of German names. Where the German form might not be generally understood, the English form has been used. In the main, however, the German forms have been retained.

Socialism and Social-Democracy, Socialist and Social-Democrat, have been used interchangeably throughout. There is no difference of meaning between the words.

S. MILES BOUTON

Asheville, New York,
November 1, 1919.

CHAPTER I.

The Governmental Structure of Germany.

The peoples of this generation—at least, those of highly civilized and cultured communities—had little or no familiarity with revolutions and the history of revolutions before March, 1917, when Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown. There was and still is something about the very word "revolution" which is repugnant to all who love ordered and orderly government. It conjures up pictures of rude violence, of murder, pillage and wanton destruction. It violates the sentiments of those that respect the law, for it is by its very nature a negation of the force of existing laws. It breaks with traditions and is an overcoming of inertia; and inertia rules powerfully the majority of all peoples.

The average American is comparatively little versed in the history of other countries. He knows that the United States of America came into existence by a revolution, but "revolutionary" is for him in this connection merely an adjective of time used to locate and describe a war fought between two powers toward the end of the eighteenth century. He does not realize, or realizes but dimly, the essential kinship of all revolutions. Nor does he realize that most of the governments existing today came into being as the result of revolutions, some of them bloodless, it is true, but all at bottom a revolt against existing laws and governmental forms. The extortion of the Magna Charta from King John in 1215 was not the less a revolution because it was the bloodless work of the English barons. It took two bloody revolutions to establish France as a republic. All the Balkan states are the products of revolution. A man need not be old to remember the overthrow of the monarchy in Brazil; the revolution in Portugal was but yesterday as historians count time. Only the great wisdom and humanitarianism of the aged King Oscar II prevented fighting and bloodshed between Sweden and Norway when Norway announced her intention of breaking away from the dual kingdom. The list could be extended indefinitely.

The failure to recall or realize these things was one of the factors responsible for the universal surprise and amazement when the Hohenzollerns were overthrown. The other factor was the general—and justified—impression that the government of Germany was one of the strongest, most ably administered and most homogeneous governments of the world. And yet Germany, too, or what subsequently became the nucleus of Germany, had known revolution. It was but seventy years since the King of Prussia had been forced to stand bareheaded in the presence of the bodies of the "March patriots," who had given their lives in a revolt which resulted in a new constitution and far-reaching concessions to the people.

Even to those who did recall and realize these things, however, the German revolution came as a shock. The closest observers, men who knew Germany intimately, doubted to the very last the possibility of successful revolution there. And yet, viewed in the light of subsequent happenings, it will be seen how natural, even unavoidable, the revolution was. It came as the inevitable result of conditions created by the war and the blockade. It will be the purpose of this book to make clear the inevitableness of the débâcle, and to explain the events that followed it.

For a better understanding of the whole subject a brief explanation of the structure of Germany's governmental system is in place. This will serve the double purpose of showing the strength of the system which the revolution was able to overturn and of dispelling a too general ignorance regarding it.

The general condemnation of Prussia, the Prussians and the Hohenzollerns must not be permitted to obscure their merits and deserts. For more than five hundred years without a break in the male line this dynasty handed down its inherited rights and produced an array of great administrators who, within three centuries, raised Prussia to the rank of a first-rate power.

The kingdom that subsequently became the nucleus for the German Empire lost fully half its territory by the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, when, following the reverses in the Napoleonic wars, Germany was formally dissolved and the Confederation of the Rhine was formed by Napoleon. The standing army was limited to 42,000 men, and trade with Great Britain was prohibited. The Confederation obeyed the letter of the military terms, but evaded its spirit by successively training levies of 42,000 men, and within six years enough trained troops were available to make a revolt against Napoleonic slavery possible. The French were routed and cut to pieces at the Battle of the Nations near Leipsic in 1813, and Prussian Germany was again launched on the road to greatness.

A certain democratic awakening came on the heels of the people's liberation from foreign domination. It manifested itself particularly in the universities. The movement became so threatening that a conference of ministers of the various states was convoked in 1819 to consider counter-measures. The result was an order disbanding the political unions of the universities, placing the universities under police supervision and imposing a censorship upon their activities.

The movement was checked, but not stopped. In 1847 ominous signs of a popular revolution moved King Frederick William IV of Prussia to summon the Diet to consider governmental reforms. The chief demand presented by this Diet was for a popular representation in the government. The King refused to grant this. A striking commentary upon the political backwardness of Germany is furnished by the fact that one of the demands made by a popular convention held in Mannheim in the following year was for trial by jury, a right granted in England more than six hundred years earlier by the Magna Charta. Other demands were for the freedom of the press and popular representation in the government.

The revolution of 1848 in Prussia, while it failed to produce all that had been hoped for by those responsible for it, nevertheless resulted in what were for those times far-reaching reforms. A diet was convoked at Frankfort-on-the-Main. It adopted a constitution establishing some decided democratic reforms and knit the fabric of the German confederation more closely together.

The structure of the Confederation was already very substantial, despite much state particularism and internal friction. An important event in the direction of a united Germany had been the establishment in 1833 of the Zollverein or Customs Union. The existence of scores of small states, [1] each with its own tariffs, currency and posts, had long hindered economic development. There is a well-known anecdote regarding a traveler who, believing himself near the end of his day's journey, after having passed a dozen customs-frontiers, found his way barred by the customs-officials of another tiny principality. Angered at the unexpected delay, he refused to submit to another examination of his effects and another exaction of customs-duties.

[ [1] There were more than three hundred territorial sovereignties in Germany when the new constitution of the union was adopted at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.—There were principalities of less than one square mile in extent. The particularism engendered by this state of affairs has always been one of the greatest handicaps with which federal government in Germany has had to contend.

"You aren't a country," he said. "You're just a spot. I'll go around you." And this he did, without being seriously delayed in reaching his destination.

The growing power of Germany aroused the fear of the French, who realized what the union of the vital, energetic and industrious German races would mean. Years of tension culminated in the war of 1870-71. The result is known. Unprepared for the conflict, the French were crushed, just as Austria had been crushed four years earlier.

The last external obstacle in the way of German unity and strength had thus strangely been removed. On January 18, 1871, while the victorious German armies still stood at the gates of Paris, King William I was proclaimed German Emperor as Kaiser Wilhelm I.

The designation as "German Emperor" should be noted, because it is significant of the manner of union of the German Empire. The aged monarch was insistent that the title should be "Emperor of Germany." To this the sovereigns of the other German states objected, as carrying the implication of their own subjection. Between "German Emperor" or "Emperor in Germany" and "Emperor of Germany," they pointed out, there was a wide difference. "German Emperor" implied merely that the holder of that title was primus inter pares, merely the first among equals, the presiding officer of an aggregation of sovereigns of equal rank who had conferred this dignity upon him, just as a diet, by electing one of its number chairman, confers upon him no superiority of rank, but merely designates him to conduct their deliberations. These sovereigns' jealousy of their own prerogatives had at first led them to consider vesting the imperial honors alternately with the Prussian and Bavarian King, but this idea was abandoned as impracticable. At the urgent representations of Bismarck the aged King consented, with tears in his eyes, it is said, to accept the designation of German Emperor.

The German Empire as thus formed consisted of twenty-five states and the Reichsland of Alsace-Lorraine, which was administered by a viceroy appointed by the King of Prussia. The empire was a federated union of states much on the pattern of the United States of America, but the federative character was not completely carried out because of the particularism of certain states. The Bavarians, whose customs of life, easy-going ways, and even dialects are more akin to those of the German Austrians than of the Prussians, [2] exacted far-reaching concessions as the price of their entrance into the empire. They retained their own domestic tariff-imposts, their own army establishment, currency, railways, posts, telegraphs and other things. Certain other states also reserved a number of rights which ought, for the formation of a perfect federative union, to have been conferred upon the central authority. On the whole, however, these reservations proved less of a handicap than might have been expected.

[ [2] The Bavarians have from early days disliked the Prussians heartily. Saupreuss' (sow-Prussian) and other even less elegant epithets were in common use against the natives of the dominant state. It must in fairness be admitted that this dislike was the natural feeling of the less efficient Bavarian against the efficient and energetic Prussian.

The Imperial German Constitution adopted at this time was in many ways a remarkable document. It cleverly combined democratic and absolutist features. The democratic features were worked out with a wonderful psychological instinct. In the hands of almost any people except the Germans or Slavs the democratic side of this instrument would have eventually become the predominant one. That it did not is a tribute to the astuteness of Bismarck and of the men who, under his influence, drafted the constitution.

The German Parliament or Reichsrat was composed of two houses, the Bundesrat, or Federal Council, and the Reichstag, or Imperial Diet. The Federal Council was designed as the anchor of absolutism. It was composed of fifty-eight members, of whom seventeen came from Prussia, six from Bavaria, and four each from Saxony and Württemberg. The larger of the other states had two or three each, and seventeen states had but one each. In 1911 three members were granted to Alsace-Lorraine by a constitution given at that time to the Reichsland. The members of the Federal Council were the direct representatives of their respective sovereigns, by whom they were designated, and not of the people of the respective states. Naturally they took their instructions from their sovereigns. Nearly all legislative measures except bills for raising revenue had to originate in the Federal Council, and its concurrence with the Reichstag was requisite for the enactment of laws. A further absolutist feature of the constitution was the provision that fourteen votes could block an amendment to the constitution. In other words, Prussia with her seventeen members could prevent any change not desired by her governing class.

The Reichstag, the second chamber of the parliament, was a truly democratic institution. Let us say rather that it could have become a democratic institution. Why it did not do so will be discussed later. It consisted of 397 members, who were elected by the most unlimited suffrage prevailing at that time in all Europe. It is but recently, indeed within the last five years, that as universal and free a suffrage has been adopted by other European countries, and there are still many which impose limitations unknown to the German Constitution. Every male subject who had attained the age of twenty-five years and who had not lost his civil rights through the commission of crime, or who was not a delinquent taxpayer or in receipt of aid from the state or his community as a pauper, was entitled to vote. The vote was secret and direct, and the members of the Reichstag were responsible only to their constituents and not subject to instructions from any governmental body or person. They were elected for a term of three years, [3] but their mandates could be terminated at any time by the Kaiser, to whom was reserved the right to dissolve the Reichstag. If he dissolved it, however, he was compelled to order another election within a definitely stated period.

[ [3] This was later altered to five years.

One very real power was vested in the Reichstag. It had full control of the empire's purse strings. Bills for raising revenue and all measures making appropriations had to originate in this chamber, and its assent was required to their enactment. The reason for its failure to exercise this control resolutely must be sought in the history of the German people, in their inertia where active participation in governmental matters is concerned, and in those psychological characteristics which Bismarck so well comprehended and upon which he so confidently counted.

No people on earth had had a more terrible or continuous struggle for existence than the various tribes that later amalgamated to form the nucleus for the German Empire. Their history is a record of almost continuous warfare, going back to the days of Julius Cæsar. In the first years of the Christian era the Germans under Arminius (Hermann) crushed the Romans of Varus's legions in the Teutoburg Forest, and the land was racked by war up to most modern times. Most of its able-bodied men were exterminated during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). [4] This almost constant preoccupation in war had a twofold result: it intensified the struggle for existence of the common man and kept him from devoting either his thoughts or energies to problems of government, and it strengthened the powers of a comparatively small ruling-class, who alone possessed any culture and education and whose efforts were naturally directed to keeping their serfs in the subjection of ignorance. These conditions prevailed until well into the last century.

[ [4] The population of Germany dropped from twenty to less than seven millions during this war.

The conditions can best be appreciated by a comparison with the conditions existing in England at the same time. England, too, had had her wars, but her soil was but rarely ravaged by foreign invaders, and never to the extent in which Germany repeatedly suffered. Parliamentary government of a sort had existed more than three centuries in England before it reached Germany. A milder climate than that of North Germany made the struggle for the bare necessaries of life less strenuous, and gave opportunity to a greater proportion of the people to consider other things than the mere securing of enough to eat and drink. They began to think politically centuries before political affairs ceased to rest entirely in the hands of the nobility of Germany.

The Germans of the lower and middle classes—in other words, the vast majority of the whole people—were thus both without political training and without even the inclination to think independently along political lines. Some advance had, it is true, been made along these lines since the Napoleonic wars, but the events of 1871 nevertheless found the great mass of the people without political tutelage or experience. People even more politically inclined would have found themselves handicapped by this lack of training, and the German—particularly the Southern German—is not politically inclined. This will be discussed more fully in the chapters dealing with the course of events following the revolution of 1918. It will be sufficient to point out here the German's inclination to abstract reasoning, to philosophizing and to a certain mysticism; his love of music and fine arts generally, his undeniable devotion to the grosser creature-comforts, eating and drinking, and his tendency not to worry greatly about governmental or other impersonal affairs provided he be kept well fed and amused. It is, in brief, the spirit to which the Roman emperors catered with the panem et circenses, and which manifests itself strikingly in the German character. The result of all this was a marked inertia which characterized German political life up to recent years. Even when a limited political awakening came it was chiefly the work of German-Jews, not of Germans of the old stock.

These, then, were the conditions that prevented the democratic features of the Imperial Constitution from acquiring that prominence and importance which they would have acquired among a different people. The Kaiser could dissolve the Reichstag at will. Why, then, bother oneself about opposing the things desired by the Kaiser and his brother princes? It merely meant going to the trouble of a new election, and if that Reichstag should prove recalcitrant also, it could in its turn be dissolved. Apparently it never occurred to the mass of the Germans that the Kaiser could not go on indefinitely dissolving a representative body which insisted upon carrying out the people's will. The Reichstag, being on the whole neither much wiser nor more determined than the people that elected it, accepted this view of the situation. Occasionally it showed a bit of spirit, notably when it adopted a vote of censure against the government in the matter of the Zabern affair in 1913. On the whole, however, it accepted meekly the rôle that caused it to be termed, and justly, a "debating club." And this was precisely the rôle that had been planned for it by the drafters of the constitution.

In justice to the Reichstag, however, one thing should be pointed out. When the German Empire was formed the country was still predominantly an agricultural land. The election districts were on the whole justly erected, and no one section of the country had a markedly disproportionate number of representatives. It was not long, however, before the flight to the cities began in Germany as in other countries, and at the beginning of the present century the greater part of Germany's population lived in the cities. The result was speedily seen in the constitution of the Reichstag, since no redistricting was ever made since the original districting of 1871. Greater Berlin, with a population around four million, elected but six representatives to the Reichstag. In other words, there were some 660,000 inhabitants for every delegate. The agricultural districts, however, and especially those of Northern Germany—East Elbia, as it is termed—continued to elect the same number of representatives as at the beginning to represent a population which had increased but little or not at all. There were districts in East and West Prussia, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Pomerania and Posen where fewer than ten thousand voters were able to send a representative to the Reichstag.

The result was the natural one. Throughout the world conservatism has its headquarters on the farms. The farmers cling longest to the old order of things, they free themselves the most slowly from tradition, they are least susceptible to sociological and socialistic ideas and, in so far as they own their own land, they are among the strongest supporters of vested property-rights. In no other country was this more the case than in Germany, and especially in the districts mentioned, where large estates predominate and whence have come for two hundred years the most energetic, faithful and blindly loyal servants of their sovereign. The cities, on the other hand, and particularly the larger cities are the strongholds of new ideas. They are in particular the breeding-places of Socialism and Communism. Five of the six Reichstag members elected from Greater Berlin in 1912 were Social-Democrats, and the sixth was a Progressive with advanced democratic ideas.

With the shifting population and the consequent distortion of the election districts, a tremendous advantage accrued to the rural communities; in other words, the forces opposed to democratic reforms and in favor of maintaining and even increasing the powers of the King and Emperor steadily increased proportionately their representation in the Reichstag at the expense of the friends of democracy. At the Reichstag election of 1912 the Socialists cast roundly thirty-five per cent of the total popular vote. Handicapped by the unjust districting, however, they were able to elect only 110 delegates, whereas their proportion of the total vote entitled them to 139. The Progressives, most of whose strength also lay in the cities, likewise received fewer members than their total vote entitled them to have. Under a fair districting these two parties would together have had nearly a clear majority of the Reichstag. There is reason to believe that the whole course of history of the last years would have been altered had Germany honestly reformed her Reichstag election districts ten years ago. On such small things does the fate of nations often rest.

The Kaiser, as the president of the empire, was authorized to "represent the empire internationally." He named the diplomatic representatives to foreign courts and countries and to the Vatican. He was empowered to make treaties, and to declare defensive warfare provided the enemy had actually invaded German territory. He could not declare an offensive war without the consent of the Federal Council, nor a defensive war unless the invasion mentioned had taken place. He was commander-in-chief of the navy, and of the Prussian army and the armies of the other federal states except of Saxony and Bavaria, which maintained their own military establishments. He appointed—in theory—all federal officials and officers of the army and navy. On the whole, however, his powers as German Emperor were strictly limited and hardly went beyond the powers of the ruler of any constitutional monarchy.

It was as King of Prussia, however, that he really exercised the greatest power, and thus vicariously strengthened his powers in the empire at large. The parliamentary system of Prussia was archaic and designed to make impossible any really democratic government or a too severe limitation upon the powers of the King. It was, like the Imperial Parliament, made up of two chambers, a House of Lords and a Diet. The upper chamber, the House of Lords, was composed of men appointed by the King, either for a fixed term or for life. It goes without saying that all these men were strong supporters of the monarchic system and outspoken enemies of democracy. No legislation could be enacted against their will. The composition of the Diet, moreover, was such that the House of Lords had until very recent years little to fear in the way of democratic legislation. It was elected by the so-called three-class system, under which a wealthy man frequently had greater voting power than his five hundred employees together. The ballot moreover was indirect, the delegates being elected by a complicated system of electors. In addition to all this, the ballot was open, not secret. This placed a powerful weapon in the hands of the employing classes generally and of the great estate-owners particularly. The polling-places in rural districts were generally located on land belonging to one of these estates, and the election officials were either the estate-owners themselves or men dependent on them. In these circumstances it took a brave man to vote otherwise than his employer desired, and there was no way of concealing for whom or what party he had voted. Bismarck himself, reactionary and conservative as he was, once termed the Prussian three-class voting-system "the most iniquitous of all franchise systems."

Around this a fight had waged for several years before the revolution. The Kaiser, as King of Prussia, flatly promised, in his address from the throne in 1908, that the system should be reformed. It is a matter of simple justice to record that he made the promise in good faith and tried to see that it was kept. His efforts along this line were thwarted by a small clique of men who were determined "to protect the King against himself," and who, lacking even the modicum of political prescience possessed by the Kaiser-King, failed to see that if they did not make a concession willingly they would eventually be forced to make a concession of much greater extent. From year to year measures to reform the three-class system were introduced, only to be killed by the House of Lords. Under the stress of the closing days of the war such a measure was perfected and would have become a law had not the revolution intervened. But it came too late, just as did scores of other reforms undertaken in the eleventh hour.

And thus, while the Kaiser's power as German Emperor was sharply limited, he enjoyed powers as King of Prussia which in some degree approached absolutism. The dominance of Prussia in the empire, while it could not transfer these powers to the Emperor de jure, did unquestionably effect to some degree a de facto transfer, which, while it did not in the long run have a very actual or injurious internal effect, nevertheless played a no inconsiderable part in the outside world and was responsible for a general feeling that Germany was in effect an absolute monarchy. German apologists have maintained that Wilhelm II had less actual power as German Emperor than that possessed by the President of the United States. This statement is undoubtedly true, but with an important limitation and qualification. The President's great powers are transitory and cannot—or in practice do not—extend more than eight years at the most. His exercise of those powers is governed and restrained during the first four years by his desire to be re-elected; during the second four years he must also use his powers in such a way that a democratic people will not revenge itself at the next election upon the President's party. But the Kaiser and King was subject to no such limitation. He ruled for life, and a dissatisfied people could not take the succession away from the Hohenzollerns except by revolution. And nobody expected or talked of revolution. The only real control over abuses of power rested with a Reichstag which, as has already been explained, was too faithful a reflex of a non-political and inert constituency to make this control of more than mild academic interest.

CHAPTER II.

The German Conception of the State.

We have seen how the whole manner of life and the traditions of the Germans were obstacles to their political development. Mention has also been made of their peculiar tendency toward abstract philosophic habits of thought, which are not only inexplicable by the manner of the people's long-continued struggle for existence, but seem indeed to prevail in defiance of it.

In addition to this powerful factor there existed another set of factors which worked with wonderful effectiveness toward the same end—the crippling of independent and practical political thinking. This was the conception of the state held by the ruling-classes of Germany and their manner of imposing this conception upon the people. It may briefly be put thus: the people existed for the sake of the state, not the state for the sake of the people. The state was the central and great idea; whatever weakened its authority or power was of evil. It could grant free play to individualism only in those things that could not affect the state directly, such as music and the fine arts, and to abstract philosophy and literature—particularly the drama—as long as they avoided dangerous political topics. Its keynote was authority and the subjection of the individual to the welfare of the state.

The tendency of this system to make for efficiency so far as the actual brute power of a state is concerned cannot be denied in the light of the events of the World War. We have seen how in America itself, the stronghold of political and religious liberty, individualism was sternly repressed and even slight offenses against the authority of the state were punished by prison sentences of a barbarous severity unknown in any civilized country of Europe. We have seen the churches, reinterpreting the principles of the New Testament, and the schools, rewriting history to supposed good ends, both enlisted in this repression of individualism for the sake of increasing the efficiency of the state at a time when the highest efficiency was required.

But the distinction between such conditions here and the pre-war conditions in Germany is that they obtained, although in milder form, in Germany in peace times as well. And the Anglo-Saxon conception of the state is as of a thing existing for the sake of the people and with no possible interests that cannot be served by the democratic and individualistic development of its people. Between this conception and the conception held by Germany's rulers there is a wide and irreconcilable difference.

Apart, however, from any consideration of the merits of the German system, it must be admitted that the world has never seen another such intelligent application of principles of statecraft to the end sought to be attained. That the system eventually collapsed was not due to its internal faults, but to abnormal and unforeseeable events. The extent of its collapse, however, was directly due to the structure of the system itself.

It has already been pointed out that authority was the keynote of the German system. This authority, embodied in school and church, began to mold the plastic mind of the German child as early as the age of six. "The Emperor is the father of his country and loves his children like a father; we owe him the obedience due to a father," taught the school. "Submit yourselves unto authority," said the church, using Paul's words to serve the ends of the state. The child came from school and church to his military service and found authority enthroned there. He had to obey the orders of every Vorgesetzter (superior in authority) from field marshal down to corporal. He found that, in the absence of officers or non-commissioned officers, he must submit himself to the authority of the Stubenältester, the senior soldier in the same room with him. Insubordination was punished rigorously.

Precept, example and punishment were but a part of a system calculated to make discipline and submission to authority advisable and profitable. The penalties prescribed by the German penal and military codes for infractions of the laws were far less severe than the penalties prescribed in the code of any American state, but conviction was followed by a consequence of great moment in Germany: the man who was vorbestraft, that is, who had been punished for any transgression, found himself automatically excluded from any opportunity to become a Beamter, or government official.

The system of punishment had always as its chief purpose the laying of emphasis upon duty, and this was often arrived at in an indirect way. For example, the soldier who failed to keep his valuables in the locker provided for him in his barracks and who lost them by theft, was punished for his own negligence.

No other country in the world employed so large a proportion of its total population in the administration of government, and in no other country was the system so cleverly calculated to make government office attractive to the average man. The salaries were not larger than those earned by men of the same class in non-official employments, but employment under the government offered in addition both material and moral advantages. The chief material advantage was the right to retire after a specified number of years of service on liberal pension. The moral advantages rested in the dignity of government service and in the special protection afforded government servants. A carefully graded scale of titles made its appeal to personal vanity. This has frequently been described as particularly German, but it was, in the last analysis, merely human. There are comparatively few men in any country, not excluding America, who are totally indifferent to titles, and there is at least one state whose fondness for them has become a stock subject for all American humorists. What was, however, particularly German was the astuteness with which the ruling-classes of Germany had turned this human weakness to account as an asset of government, and also the extent to which it had been developed, especially downward. Mr. Smith, who cleans the streets of an American city, would not be especially gratified to be addressed as Mr. Street-Cleaner, but his German colleague felt a glow of pride at hearing the address "Herr Street-Cleaner Schmidt," and this feeling was a very real asset to his government. It was the same at the other end of the scale. The government councillor was the more faithful and energetic in his devotion to the government's work because he knew that by faithfulness and energy he would eventually become a "privy government councillor" and the next step would be to "real privy government councillor, with the predicate 'Your Excellency'." And since wives bore the titles of their husbands, the appeal was doubly strong.

The Beamter enjoyed furthermore special protection under the law. To call an ordinary person "idiot," for example, was a Beleidigung or insult, but the same term applied to a Beamter became Beamtenbeleidigung, or "insult to an official," and involved a much sharper punishment, and this punishment increased with the dignity of the person insulted until the person of the Kaiser was reached, an insult to whom was Majestätsbeleidigung, an insult to majesty, or lèse majesté, as the French term it. Prosecutions for Majestätsbeleidigung were not frequent, but the law was occasionally invoked. One of the last prosecutions for this offense occurred in 1913, when a man who had demonstratively turned a picture of the Kaiser toward the wall in the presence of a large gathering was sent to jail for four months.

Personal vanity was further exploited by a system of orders, decorations and civil-service medals. This system originated from an ancient custom which, with increasing travel, had become onerous. Royalty was everywhere expected to tip servants only with gold, and since the smallest gold coin was the equivalent of the American $2.50-piece, this constituted a severe financial tax on the poorer ruler of small principalities, who traveled much. One of these petty rulers conceived the bright idea of creating a system of bronze orders or medallions and substituting these inexpensive decorations for tips. The event justified his expectations; they were esteemed more highly than cash tips by people whose vanity was flattered at receiving a "decoration" from royalty. Eventually all states and the Empire adopted them. On fête days railway station-masters could be recognized on the streets by their numerous decorations. The railway-engineer, the mail-carrier, the janitor in a government office—all these men knew that so many years of loyal service meant recognition in the form of some sort of decoration for the coat-lapel, and these, in the stratum of society in which they moved, were just as highly regarded as was the Red Eagle or Hohenzollern House Order in higher classes of society. There is no room whatever for doubt that these things, whose actual cost was negligible, played a large part in securing faithful and devoted service to the government and compensated largely—and especially in the case of higher officials—for somewhat niggardly salaries. A prominent English statesman, visiting Berlin some years before the war, expressed to the writer his regret that England had not built up a similar system, which, in his opinion, was a powerful factor in securing a cheap and good administration of public affairs. Like the system of titles, it took advantage of a weakness not merely German, but human. Instances of the refusal of foreign orders and decorations by Americans are rare.

All these things, then, were factors of almost inestimable value in building up a strong governmental machine. At bottom, however, the whole structure rested upon another factor which should receive ungrudging admiration and recognition, regardless of one's attitude toward Germany or its governing classes. This was the strong sense of duty inculcated in every German, man or woman, from lowest to highest. Self-denial, a Spartan simplicity, faithfulness in the discharge of one's obligations—these were the characteristics that set their seal upon the average German. In some of the larger cities, and notably in Berlin, the Spartan ideals of life had been somewhat abandoned in the years preceding the war, but elsewhere they persisted, and nowhere to a greater extent than among the ruling-classes of Prussia, the so-called Junker. Former Ambassador Gerard has paid a deserved tribute to this class, [5] and the universal condemnation visited upon them by democratic peoples cannot justify a refusal to give them their due.

[ [5] "There is no leisure class among the Junkers. They are all workers, patriotic, honest and devoted to the Emperor and the Fatherland. If it is possible that government by one class is to be suffered, then the Prussian Junkers have proved themselves more fit for rule than any class in history. Their virtues are Spartan, their minds narrow but incorruptible, and their bravery and patriotism undoubted. One can but admire them and their stern, virtues." James W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, p. 123.

This uncompromising devotion to duty had its roots in old Prussian history. Frederick William I, father of Frederick the Great, threatened his son with death if he were found derelict in what the stern old man regarded as the duty of a future ruler.

The whole rule of Frederick the Great was marked by a rigid sense of duty. He termed himself "the first servant of the state," and no servant worked harder or allowed himself less leisure or fewer bodily comforts. It was this monarch who, told of a brave act of sacrifice by one of his officers, refused to consider it as anything calling for special recognition. Er hat nur seine verdammte Pflicht und Schuldigkeit getan (he did only his accursed duty), said the King. This saying became the formula that characterized the attitude of the Prussian-German Beamten in their relations to the state. Whatever was (or was represented as) their "accursed duty" must be done, regardless of personal considerations or rewards.

In the catalogue of virtues enumerated we have one important group of prerequisites to efficient government. There remain two things: intelligence and education. The first can be dismissed briefly. The average of intelligence in all civilized countries is probably much the same. There would not be much difference in native capacity and ability between the best thousand of a million Germans or of a million men of any other race. In respect of education and training, however, German officials as a whole were at least the equal of any body of government servants anywhere in the world and the superior of most. In the first place, educational qualifications were definitely laid down for every category of officials. Nor were these qualifications determined, as in the American civil-service, by an examination. The candidate must have attended school and taken the prescribed course for a term of years, varying with the importance of the government career to which he aspired.

This insured the possession of adequate educational qualifications of civil servants, and there was another thing of first importance in the building up of a strong and efficient civil-service. The "spoils system" in connection with public office was absolutely unknown in Germany. The idea that appointments to the government's service should depend upon the political faith of the appointee was one that never occurred to any German. If it had occurred to him it would have been immediately dismissed as inconsistent with the best administration of the government's affairs, as, indeed, it is. The only partisan qualification, or rather limitation, upon eligibility to public office was that members of the Social-Democratic party were ineligible, and that government employees might not become members of that party. From the standpoint of the ruling-classes this was natural. It was more; it was requisite. For the German Socialists were the avowed and uncompromising enemies of the existing government; they were advocates of a republic; they were the outspoken enemies of all authority except the authority of their own class, for which they assumed to be the only legitimate spokesmen, and they were, like Socialists the world over, internationalists first and patriots second. No government could be expected to help its bitterest opponents to power by giving places of honor and profit to their representatives.

The tenure of government officials, except, of course, that of ministers, was for life. Promotion was by merit, not by influence. The result was an efficiency which is generally admitted. The municipal administration of German cities in particular became the model for the world. The system withstood the practical test; it worked. The Chief Burgomaster of Greater Berlin is a man whose whole life-training has been devoted to the administration of cities. Beginning in a subordinate position in a small city, he became eventually its burgomaster (mayor), then mayor of a larger city, and so on until he was called to take charge of the administration of the empire's largest city. His career is typical of the German pre-revolutionary methods of choosing public servants, and the same principle was applied in every department of the government's service.

From the purposely brief sketch of German officialdom's characteristics and efficiency which has been presented it will be apparent that such a system was a powerful weapon in the hands of any ruling-class. Its efficiency might reasonably be expected to crush any revolution in the bud, and the loyalty of the men composing it might equally be expected to maintain to the last their allegiance to the classes that represented authority, with its supreme fount in the person of the ruler himself. That these expectations were not fulfilled would seem to testify to the inherent and irresistible strength of the revolution that upset it. We shall see later, however, that it was a different class of men with whom the revolution had to cope. Against the spirit of German officialdom of ante-bellum days revolution would have raised its head in vain.

The authority of the German state had another and even more powerful weapon than the Beamtentum. This was the military establishment and the officer-corps. Upon this in the first instance the throne of the Hohenzollerns was supported.

Enlightened democracy discovered centuries ago that a large standing army may easily become the tool of absolutism and the enemy of free institutions. This discovery found expression in England in the consistent refusal of Parliament to create an army in permanence. The laws establishing the English army had to be renewed periodically, so that it was possible at any time for the representatives of the people to draw the teeth of the military force if an attempt should be made to use that force for tyrannical ends. But the Germans, as has already been explained, lacked democratic training and perceptions. Germany was moreover in a uniquely dangerous position. No other great power had such an unfavorable geographical situation. On the west was France, and there were thousands of Germans who had been told by their fathers the story of the Napoleonic slavery. On the east was Russia, stronghold of absolutism, with inexhaustible natural resources and a population more than twice Germany's. Great Britain commanded the seas, and Germany had to import or starve.

It cannot fairly be doubted that, placed in a similar situation, the most pacific nation would have armed itself to the teeth. But—and this is all-important—it is difficult to imagine that such other nation would have become militaristic.

The stock answer of German apologists to the accusations regarding "militarism" as exemplified in Prussia-Germany has been the assertion that France spent more money per capita on her military establishment than did Germany. This statement is true, but those making it overlooked the real nature of the charge against them. They did not realize that militarism, as the world saw it in their country, was not concrete, but abstract; it was, in brief, a state of mind. It could have existed equally well if the army had been but a quarter as large, and it did not exist in France, which, in proportion to her population, had a larger army than Germany. It exalted the profession of arms above all else; it divided the people into two classes, military and civilians. Its spirit was illustrated strikingly by the fact that when Wilhelm II ascended the throne, his first act was to issue a proclamation to the army, but it was not until three days later that his proclamation to the people was issued. Militarism gave the youngest lieutenant at court precedence over venerable high civilian officials.

The spirit of militarism permeated even to the remotest corners of daily activity in all walks of life. The gatekeeper at a railway crossing must stand at attention, with his red flag held in a prescribed manner, while the train is passing. A Berlin mail-carrier was punished for saluting a superior with his left hand, instead of with the right. A street-car conductor was fined for driving his car between two wagons of a military transport. This was in peace times, and the transport was conveying hay. That the passengers in the car would otherwise have had to lose much time was of no consequence; nothing could be permitted to interfere with anything hallowed by connection with the military establishment. When Herr von Bethmann Hollweg was appointed Imperial Chancellor it was necessary to give him military rank, since he had never held it. He was created a general, for it could not be suffered that a mere civilian should occupy the highest post in the empire next to the Kaiser. The Kaiser rarely showed himself in public in civilian attire.

It was but natural that the members of the officer-corps held an exalted opinion of their own worth and dignity. Militarism is everywhere tarred with the same stick, and army officers, if freed from effective civil control, exhibit in all lands the same tendency to arbitrariness and to a scorn and contempt for mere civilians. Such release from control is seen in other lands, however, only in time of war, whereas it was a permanently existing state of affairs in Germany. It worked more powerfully there than would have been the case anywhere else, for all the country's traditions and history were of a nature to exalt military service. Ravaged by war for centuries, Germany's greatness had been built up by the genius of her army leaders and the bravery and loyalty of her soldiers. Hundreds of folksongs and poems known to every German child glorified war and its heroes. The youthful Theodor Körner, writing his Gebet vor der Schlacht (Prayer before the Battle) by the light of the bivouac-fires a few hours before the battle in which he was killed, makes a picture that must appeal even to persons who abhor war. How much greater, then, must its appeal have been to a military folk!

The German officer was encouraged to consider himself of better clay than the ordinary civilian. His "honor" was more delicate than the honor of women. It was no infrequent occurrence for an officer, willing to right by marriage a woman whom he had wronged, to be refused permission either because she did not have a dowry corresponding to his rank, or because she was of a lower social class. Duelling among officers was encouraged, and to step on an officer's foot, or even to stare too fixedly at him (fixieren) was an insult calling for a duel. An officer's credit was good everywhere. His word was as readily accepted as a civilian's bond, and honesty requires that it be said that his trust was rarely misplaced. His exaggerated ideas of honor led frequently to an arrogant conduct toward civilians, and occasionally to assaults upon offenders, which in a few instances took the form of a summary sabering of the unfortunate victim. [6]

[ [6] Some travelers and a certain class of correspondents have unduly exaggerated the conditions referred to. They have pictured murders of this sort as of frequent occurrence, and, if they could be believed, German officers made it a custom to require women in the street cars to surrender their seats to them. In many years' residence in Germany the author learned of but two cases of the murder of civilians by officers, and he never saw a display of rudeness toward a woman. The German officer almost invariably responded in kind to courtesy, but he did expect and require deference from civilians.

The crassest of the outward, non-political manifestations of militarism in recent years was the Zabern affair. A young lieutenant had sabered a crippled shoemaker for a real or fancied offense against military rules. The townspeople made a demonstration against the officer, and the colonel commanding the regiment stationed at Zabern locked a number of the civilians in the cellar of the barracks and kept them there all night. This was too much even for a docile German Reichstag, and an excited debate was followed by the passing of a vote of censure on a government which, through the mouths of its Chancellor and War Minister, had justified the colonel's actions. The colonel and the lieutenant were convicted upon trial and adequate sentences were imposed upon them, but the convictions were significantly set aside upon appeal and both escaped punishment. It was in connection with this affair that the German Crown Prince earned the censure of the soberer German elements by sending an encouraging telegram to the arbitrary colonel.

Militarism, in the aspects discussed, was a purely internal affair and concerned only the German people themselves. But there was another aspect, and it was this that made it a menace to the peace of the world and to true democracy.

The very possession of an admirable weapon is a constant temptation to use it. This temptation becomes stronger in proportion as it springs with inclination. The Germans of the last fifty years were not a bellicose people. They had suffered too greatly from wars within the recollection of millions of men and women still living. On the other hand, they were familiar with war and the thought of it did not invoke the same repugnant fears and apprehensions as among less sorely tested peoples. The mothers of every generation except the youngest knew what it meant to see husbands, sons and brothers don the King's coat and march away behind blaring bands; they knew the anxiety of waiting for news after the battle, and the grief that comes with the announcement of a loved one's death, and they considered it dimly, if they philosophized about it at all, as one of the things that must be and against which it were unavailing to contend. But the officers as a whole were bellicose. The reasons are multifold. It is inherent in the profession that officers generally are inclined to desire war, if for no other reason, than because it means opportunities for advancement and high honors. Beyond this, the German officer's training and traditions taught him that war was in itself a glorious thing.

In trying to understand the influences that dominated the government of Germany in its relations to foreign countries it must be clearly realized and remembered that the real rulers of Germany came from the caste that had for nearly two centuries furnished the majority of the members of the officer-corps. The Emperor-King, assuming to rule by the grace of God, in reality ruled by the grace of the old nobility and landed gentry of Prussia, from whose ranks he sprang. This had been aptly expressed eighty years earlier by the poet Chamisso, in whose Nachtwächterlied appear the lines:

Und der König absolut,
Wenn er unseren Willen tut!

(Let the King be absolute so long as he does our will.) It was inevitable that the views of this class should determine the views of government, and the only remarkable thing about the situation was that some of the men who, by the indirect mandate of this caste, were responsible for the conduct of the government, were less bellicose and more pacific than their mandate-givers. There were some men who, infected with the virus of militarism, dreamed of the Welt-Imperium, the eventual domination of the world by Germany, to be attained by peaceful methods if possible, but under the threatening shadow of the empire's mighty military machine, which could be used if necessary. Yet even in their own caste they formed a minority.

Such, in brief outline, was Germany—an empire built on the bayonets of the world's greatest and most efficient army and administered by tens of thousands of loyal and efficient civil servants. How was it possible that it could be overthrown?

In the last analysis it was not overthrown; it was destroyed from within by a cancer that had been eating at its vitals for eighty years. And the seeds of this cancer, by the strange irony of fate, were sown in Germany and cultivated by Germans.

The cancer was Socialism, or Social-Democracy, as it is termed in Germany.

CHAPTER III.

Internationalism and Vaterlandslose Gesellen.

The concluding statement in the previous chapter must by no means be taken as a general arraignment of Socialism, and it requires careful explanation. Indiscriminately to attack Socialism in all its economic aspects testifies rather to mental hardihood than to an understanding of these aspects. A school of political thought which has so powerfully affected the polity of all civilized nations in the last fifty years and has put its impress upon the statutes of those countries cannot be lightly dismissed nor condemned without qualification.

Citizens of the recently allied countries will be likely also to see merit in Socialism because of the very fact that, in one of its aspects, it played a large part in overthrowing an enemy government. Let this be clearly set down and understood at the very beginning: the aspects of Socialism that made the German governmental system ripe for fall were and are inimical not only to the governmental systems of all states, but to the very idea of the state itself.

More: The men responsible for the débâcle in Germany—and in Russia—regard the United States as the chief stronghold of capitalism and of the privilege of plutocracy, and the upsetting of this country's government would be hailed by them with as great rejoicing as were their victories on the continent.

The aspect of Socialism that makes it a menace to current theories of government is "internationalism"—its doctrine that the scriptural teaching that all men are brothers must become of general application, and the negation of patriotism and the elimination of state boundaries which that doctrine logically and necessarily implies. And this doctrine was "made in Germany."

The basic idea of Socialism goes back to the eighteenth century, but its name was first formulated and applied by the Englishman Robert Owen in 1835. Essentially this school of political thought maintains that land and capital generally—the "instruments of production"—should become the property of the state or society. "The alpha and omega of Socialism is the transformation of private competing aggregations of capital into a united collective capital." [7] Ethically Socialism is merely New Testament Christianity, but, as will be seen later, it is in effect outspokenly material, irreligious and even actively anti-religious.

[ [7] Die Quintessenz des Sozialismus, by Schäffle.

Socialism received its first clear and intelligent formulation at the hands of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, both Germans, although Marx was of Jewish descent. In 1847 these two men reorganized under the name "Communist League" a society of Socialists already in existence in London. The "Manifesto of the Communist League" issued by these two men in 1848 was the first real proclamation of a Socialism with outspoken revolutionary and international aims. It demanded that the laboring-classes should, after seizure of political might, "by despotic interference with the property rights and methods of production of the bourgeoisie, little by little take from them all capital and centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i. e., in the hands of the proletariat organized as the ruling-class." Marx and Engels recommended therefore the expropriation of real estate, the confiscation of the property of all emigrants and the centralization in the hands of the state of all means of credit (banks) and transportation.

The dominant idea of the Socialism of this period was that set forth by Marx in his book, Das Kapital, which became the textbook of the movement. It was, in brief, that all wealth is produced by labor, and that the surplus above the amount necessary for the bare existence of the laborers is appropriated by the capitalists. Marx's admirers have often endeavored to show that the communism advocated by him in these first years was not the violent communism that has eventuated in the last years in Bolshevism and kindred movements under other names. The question is of only academic interest, in view of the fact that Marx himself later realized that existing institutions could not so easily be overturned as he had hoped and believed in 1848. Engels had also come to a realization of the same fact, and in 1872, when the two men prepared a new edition of the Manifesto of twenty-four years earlier, they admitted frankly:

"The practical application of these principles will always and everywhere depend upon historically existing conditions, and we therefore lay no especial stress upon the revolutionary measures proposed. In the face of the tremendous development of industry and of the organization of the laboring-classes accompanying this development, as well as in view of practical experience, this program is already in part antiquated. The Commune (of 1871 in Paris) has supplied the proof that the laboring-class cannot simply take possession of the machinery of state and set it in motion for its own purposes."

This awakening, however, came, as has been pointed out, nearly a quarter of a century after the founding of a Socialist kindergarten which openly taught revolution. In its first years this kindergarten concerned itself only with national (German) matters, and was only indirectly a menace to other countries by its tendency to awaken a spirit of unrest among the laboring-classes and to set an example which might prove contagious. In 1864, however, the Internationale was founded with the coöperation of Marx and Engels, and Socialism became a movement which directly concerned all the states of the world.

This development of Socialism was logical and natural, for its creed was essentially and in its origins international. It had originated in England in the days of the inhuman exploitation of labor, and especially child-labor, by conscienceless and greedy capitalists. It had been tried out in France. Prominent among its advocates were many Russians, notably Michael Bakunin, who later became an anarchist. Perhaps the majority of its advocates on the continent were Jews or of Jewish descent, for no other race has ever been so truly international and so little bound by state lines. The Internationale had been in the air for years before it was actually organized; that organization was delayed for sixteen years by no means indicates that the idea was new in 1864.

The basic idea of the Internationale has already been referred to. It accepted as a working-creed the biblical doctrine that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men," but it disregarded the further declaration in the same verse of the Scriptures that He "hath determined the bounds of their habitation." The Socialist creed teaches the brotherhood of man and the equality of all men irrespective of race, color or belief. The inescapable corollary of this creed is that patriotism, understood as unreasoning devotion to the real or supposed interests of the state, cannot be encouraged or even suffered. And this standpoint necessarily involves further the eventual obliteration of the state itself, for any state's chief reason for existence in a non-altruistic world is the securing of special privileges, benefits, advantages and protection for its own citizens, without consideration for the inhabitants of other states. If this exercise of its power be prohibited, the state's reason for existence is greatly diminished. Indeed, it can have virtually only a social mission left, and a social mission pure and simple cannot inspire a high degree of patriotism.

Many non-Socialist thinkers have perceived the antithesis between the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man and the particularism of national patriotism. Björnstjerne Björnson wrote: "Patriotism is a stage of transition." This doctrine may come as a shock to the average reader, yet it is undoubtedly a prophetic and accurate statement of what will some day be generally accepted. Thoughtfully considered, the idea will be found less shocking than it at first appears. Neither Björnson nor any other non-Socialist contemplates the abandonment of patriotism and state lines except by natural development. The world, in other words, is in a transitional stage, and when this transition shall have been completed it will find a world where the egoism of national patriotism has made way for the altruism of internationalism. And this will have been accomplished without violent revolutionary changes, but merely by a natural and peaceful evolutionary development.

Against such a development, if it come in the manner described and anticipated, nobody can properly protest. But the Socialists of the international school—and this is what makes international Socialism a menace to all governments and gradually but surely undermined the German state—will not wait upon the slow processes of transition. Upon peoples for whom the flags of their respective countries are still emblems of interests transcending any conceivable interests of peoples outside their own state boundaries, emblems of an idea which must be unquestioningly and unthinkingly accepted and against which no dictates of the brotherhood of other men or the welfare of other human beings have any claim to consideration, the Socialists would impose over night their idea of a world without artificial state lines, and would substitute the red flag for those emblems which the majority of all mankind still reverence and adore. It requires no profound thinking to realize that such a change must be preceded by a long period of preparation if anarchy of production and distribution is to be avoided. To impose the rule of an international proletariat under the present social conditions means chaos. The world has seen this exemplified in Russia, and yet Russia, where the social structure was comparatively simple and industry neither complex nor widely developed, was the country where, if anywhere today, such an experiment might have succeeded.

Socialist leaders, including even the internationalists, have perceived this. The murdered Jaurès saw it clearly. But in the very nature of things, the vast majority of the adherents of these doctrines are not profound thinkers. Socialism naturally recruits itself from the lower classes, and it is no disparagement to these to say that they are the least educated. Even in states where the higher institutions of learning are free—and there are very few such places—the ability of the poor man's son to attend them is limited by the necessity resting upon him to make his own living or to contribute to the support of his family. The tenets of national Socialism naturally appeal to the young man, who feels that he and his fellows are being exploited by those who own the "instruments of production," and who sees himself barred from the educational advantages which wealth gives. From the acceptance of the economic tenets of national Socialism to advocacy of internationalism is but a small step, easy to take for one who, in joining the Socialist party, finds himself the associate of men who address him as "comrade" and who look forward to a day when all men, white, black or yellow, shall also be comrades under one flag and enlisted in one cause—the cause of common humanity. These men realize no more than himself the fact that existing social conditions are the result of historical development and that they cannot be violently and artificially altered without destroying the delicate balance of the whole machine. And since this is the state of mind of the majority of the "comrades," even the wisest leaders can apply the brakes only with great moderation, for the leader who lags too far behind the majority of his party ceases to be a leader and finds his place taken by less intelligent or less scrupulous men.

Ferdinand Lassalle, the brilliant but erratic young man who organized the first Socialist party in Germany, was a national Socialist. His party grew slowly at first, and in 1864, when he died, it had but 4,600 members. In 1863 Marx aided by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, [8] formed the rival Confederation of German Unions upon an internationalistic basis. This organization joined the Internationale at its congress in Nuremburg in 1868. The parties of Marx and Lassalle maintained their separate identities until 1875, when they effected a fusion at a congress in Gotha. The Marx adherents numbered at that time about 9,000 men and the Lassalle adherents some 15,000, but the latter had already virtually accepted the doctrines of international Socialism and the Internationale, and the German Socialists had until the breaking out of the World War maintained their place as the apostles and leaders of internationalism.

[ [8] Called "the elder Liebknecht" to distinguish him from his son Karl Liebknecht, who was killed while under arrest in Berlin in the winter of 1919.

Socialism first showed itself as a political factor in Germany in 1867, when five Socialists were elected to the North German Diet. Two Genossen [9] were sent to the first Reichstag in 1871, with a popular vote of 120,000, and six years later nearly a half million red votes were polled and twelve Socialists took their seats in the Reichstag. The voting-strength of the party in Berlin alone increased from 6,700 in 1871 to 57,500 in 1877, or almost ninefold.

[ [9] Genosse, comrade, is the term by which all German-speaking Socialists address each other.

A propaganda of tremendous extent and extreme ability was carried on. No bourgeois German politician except Bismarck ever had such a keen appreciation of the power of the printed word as did those responsible for Socialism's missionary work. Daily newspapers, weekly periodicals and monthly magazines were established, and German Socialism was soon in possession of the most extensive and best conducted Socialist press in the world. The result was two-fold: the press contributed mightily to the spreading of its party's doctrines and at the same time furnished a school in which were educated the majority of the party leaders. Probably three quarters of the men who afterward became prominent in the party owed their rise and, to a great extent, their general education to their service on the editorial staffs of their party's press. By intelligent reports and special articles on news of interest to all members of the Internationale, whether German, French, English, or of what nationality they might be, this press made itself indispensable to the leaders of that movement all over the world, and contributed greatly to influencing the ideas of the Socialists of other lands.

Bismarck's clear political vision saw the menace in a movement which openly aimed at the establishment of a German republic and at the eventual overthrow of all bourgeois governments and the elimination of local patriotism and state lines. In 1878 he secured from the Reichstag the enactment of the famous Ausnahmegesetze or special laws, directed against the Socialists. They forbade Socialist publications and literature in general, prohibited the holding of Socialist meetings or the making of speeches by adherents of the party. Even the circulation of Socialist literature was prohibited. The Ausnahmegesetze legalized as an imperial measure the treatment that had already been meted out to Socialists in various states of the Empire. Following the Gotha congress in 1875, fifty-one delegates to the congress were sent to prison. Wilhelm Liebknecht received a sentence of three years and eight months and Bebel of two years and eleven months. In Saxony, from 1870 to 1875, fifty Socialists underwent prison sentences aggregating more than forty years.

But Socialism throve on oppression. In politics, as in religion, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It would be praising any statesman of the '80's too highly to say that he had learned that ideas cannot be combated with brute force, for the rulers of the world have not yet learned it. But Bismarck did perceive that, to give any promise of success, opposition to Socialism must be based upon constructive statesmanship. To many of the party's demands no objection could be made by intelligent society. And so, in the address from the throne in 1881, an extended program of state socialism was presented. With the enactment of this program into law Germany took the first important step ahead along the road of state Socialism, and all her legislation for the next thirty years was profoundly influenced by socialistic thought, in part because of a recognition of the wisdom of some of Socialism's tenets, in part because of a desire to draw the party's teeth by depriving it of campaign material.

More than a decade earlier the Catholic Church in Germany had recognized the threatening danger and sought to counteract it by the organization of Catholic labor unions. It succeeded much better in its purpose than did the government, which is not to be wondered at, since the temporal affairs of the church have always been administered more intelligently than have the state affairs of any of the world's governments. For many years Socialism made comparatively small gains in Roman Catholic districts. A similar effort by the Lutheran (State) Church in 1878 accomplished little, and Bismarck's state Socialism also accomplished little to stop the spread of Socialist doctrines.

Kaiser Wilhelm II early realized the menace to the state of these enemies of patriotism and of all bourgeois states. In a much quoted speech he termed the Socialists vaterlandslose Gesellen (fellows without a Fatherland). The designation stung all German Socialists, who, ready as they were in theory to disavow all attachment to any state, did not relish this kind of public denunciation by their monarch. The word Gesellen, too, when used in this sense has an unpleasant connotation.

The Socialists, whose political tenets necessarily made them opponents of royalty and monarchism everywhere, were particularly embittered against a Kaiser whose contempt for them was so openly expressed. Their press, which consistently referred to him baldly as "Wilhelm II" sailed as closely into the wind of lèse majesté as possible, and sometimes too closely. Leading Socialist papers had their special Sitzredacteur, or "sitting-editor," whose sole function consisted in "sitting out" jail sentences for insulting the Kaiser or other persons in authority. Police officials, taking their keynote from the Kaiser, prosecuted and persecuted Socialists relentlessly and unintelligently. Funeral processions were stopped to permit policemen to remove red streamers and ribbons from bouquets on the coffins, and graves were similarly desecrated if the friends or mourners had ventured to bind their floral offerings with the red of revolutionary Socialism. The laws authorizing police supervision of all public meetings were relentlessly enforced against Socialists, and their gatherings were dissolved by the police-official present at the least suggestion of criticism of the authorities. There was no practical remedy against this abuse of power. An appeal to the courts was possible, but a decision in June that a meeting in the preceding January had been illegally dissolved did not greatly help matters. Socialist meetings could not be held in halls belonging to a government or municipality, and the Socialists often or perhaps generally found it impossible to secure meeting-places in districts where the Conservatives or National Liberals were in control. Federal, state and municipal employees were forbidden to subscribe for Socialist publications, or to belong to that party.

The extent of these persecutions is indicated by a report made to the Socialist congress at Halle in 1890, shortly after the Ausnahmegesetze had expired by limitation, after a vain attempt had been made to get the Reichstag to reenact them. In the twelve years that the law had been in operation, 155 journals and 1,200 books and pamphlets had been prohibited; 900 members of the party had been banished from Germany without trial; 1,500 had been arrested on various charges and 300 of these punished for violations of the law.

The Ausnahmegesetze failed of their purpose just as completely as did the Six Acts [10] of 1820 in England. Even in 1878, the very year these laws were enacted, the Socialists polled more votes than ever before. In 1890 their total popular vote in the Empire was 1,427,000, which was larger than the vote cast for any other single party. They should have had eighty members in that year's Reichstag, but the shift in population and consequent disproportionateness of the election districts kept the number of Socialist deputies down to thirty-seven. At the Reichstag election of 1893 their popular vote was 1,800,000, with forty-four deputies.

[ [10] These acts were passed by Parliament after the Manchester Riots of 1819: to prevent seditious meetings for a discussion of subjects connected with church or state; to subject cheap periodical pamphlets on political subjects to a duty; to give magistrates the power of entering houses, for the purpose of seizing arms believed to be collected for unlawful purposes.

It may be seriously questioned whether Bismarck's unfortunate legislation did not actually operate to increase the Socialists' strength. Certain it is that it intensified the feeling of bitterness against the government, by men whose very creed compelled them to regard as their natural enemy even the most beneficent bourgeois government, and who saw themselves stamped as Pariahs. This feeling found expression at the party's congress in 1880 at Wyden, when a sentence of the program declaring that the party's aim should be furthered "by every lawful means" was changed to read, "by every means." It must in fairness be recorded, however, that the revolutionary threat of this change appeared to have no effect on the subsequent attitude of the party leaders or their followers. The record of German Socialism is remarkably free from violence and sabotage, and the revolution of 1918 was, as we shall see, the work of men of a different stamp from the elder Liebknecht and the sturdy and honest Bebel.

Two great factors in the growth of Socialism in Germany remain to be described. These were, first, the peculiar tendency of the Teutonic mind, already mentioned, to abstract philosophical thought, without regard to practicalities, and, second, the accident that the labor-union movement in Germany was a child of party-Socialism.

Socialism, in the last analysis, is nearer to New Testament Christianity than is any other politico-economic creed, and the professions and habits of thought of nearly all men in enlightened countries are determined or at least powerfully influenced by the precepts of Christ, no matter how far their practices may depart from these precepts. Few even of those most strongly opposed to Socialism oppose it on ethical grounds. Their opposition is based on the conviction that it is unworkable and impracticable; that it fails to take into consideration the real mainsprings of human action and conduct as society is today constituted. In an ideally altruistic society, they admit, it would be feasible, but, again, such a society would have no need of it. In other words, the fundamental objection is the objection of the practical man. Whether his objection is insuperable it is no part of the purpose of the writer to discuss. What it is desired to make plain is that Socialism appeals strongly to the dreamer, the closet-philosopher who concerns himself with abstract ethical questions without regard to their practicality or practicability as applied to the economic life of an imperfect society. And there are more men of this type in Germany than in any other country.

Loosely and inefficiently organized labor unions had existed in Germany before the birth of the Socialist movement, but they existed independently of each other and played but a limited rôle. The first labor organization of national scope came on May 23, 1863, at Leipsic, when Lassalle was instrumental in founding Der allgemeine deutsche Arbeiterverein (National German Workmen's Union). Organized labor, thus definitely committed to Socialism, remained Socialist. To become a member of a labor union in Germany—or generally anywhere on the continent—means becoming an enrolled member of the Socialist party at the same time. The only non-Socialist labor organizations in Germany were the Catholic Hirsch-Duncker unions, organized at the instance of the Roman Catholic Church to prevent the spread of Socialism. These were boycotted by all Socialists, who termed them the "yellow unions," and regarded them as union workmen in America regard non-union workers. It goes without saying that a political party which automatically enrolls in its membership all workmen who join a labor union cannot help becoming powerful.

That international Socialism is inimical to nationalism and patriotism has already been pointed out, but a word remains to be said on this subject with reference to specific German conditions. We have already seen how the Germany of the beginning of the nineteenth century was a loose aggregation of more than three hundred dynasties, most of which were petty principalities. The heritage of that time was a narrowly limited state patriotism which the Germans termed Particularismus, or particularism. Let the American reader assume that the State of Texas had originally consisted of three hundred separate states, each with its own government, and with customs and dialects varying greatly in the north and south. Assume further that, after seventy years filled with warfare and political strife, these states had been re-formed into twenty-six states, with the ruler of the most powerful at the head of the new federation, and that several of the twenty-six states had reserved control over their posts, telegraphs, railways and customs as the price for joining the federation. Even then he will have but a hazy picture of the handicaps with which the Imperial German Government had to contend.

Particularism was to the last the curse and weakness of the German Empire. The Prussian regarded himself first as a Prussian and only in second place as a German. The Bavarian was more deeply thrilled by the white-and-blue banner of his state than by the black-white-red of the Empire. The republican Hamburger thanked the Providence that did not require him to live across the Elbe in the city of Altona, which was Prussian, and the inhabitants of the former kingdoms, duchies and principalities of Western Germany that became a part of Prussia during the decades preceding the formation of the Empire regularly referred to themselves as Muss-Preussen, that is, "must-Prussians," or Prussians by compulsion.

The attempt to stretch this narrowly localized patriotism to make it cover the whole Empire could not but result in a seriously diluted product, which offered a favorable culture-medium for the bacillus of internationalism. And in any event, to apply the standards of abstract ethical reasoning to patriotism is fatal. The result may be to leave a residue of traditional and racial attachment to one's state, but that is not sufficient, in the present stage of human society, for the maintenance of a strong government. Patriotism of the my-country-right-or-wrong type must, like revealed religion, be accepted on faith. German patriotism was never of this extreme type, and in attacking it the Socialists made greater headway than would have been the case in most countries.

The Socialists had thus seriously weakened the state at two vital points. By their continuous advocacy of a republic and their obstructive tactics they had impaired to a considerable extent the authority of the state, and autocratic government rests upon authority. By their internationalist teachings they had shaken the foundations of patriotism. And there is still another count against them.

Opponents of Socialism accuse its advocates of being enemies of the Christian religion and the church. Socialists declare in reply that Socialism, being a purely economic school of thought, does not concern itself with religious matters in any manner. They point out further that the programs of Socialist parties in all lands expressly declare religion to be a private matter and one about which the party does not concern itself. This is only part of the truth. It is true that Socialism officially regards religion as a private matter, but German Socialism—and the Socialism of other lands as well—is in practice the bitter enemy of the organized church. There is an abundance of evidence to prove this assertion, but the following quotations will suffice.

August Bebel, one of the founders of German Socialism, said:

"We aim in the domain of politics at Republicanism, in the domain of economics at Socialism, and in the domain of what is today called religion at Atheism." [11]

[ [11] Quoted by W. H. Dawson in German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle, ch. 15.

Vorwärts, central organ of German Socialism, wrote on July 1, 1892:

"We would fight churches and preachers even if the preachers and curates were the most conscientious of men."

Vorwärts contrived also to add insult to the statement by using the word Pfaffen for preachers, a word having a contemptuous implication in this sense throughout Northern Germany.

Karl Kautsky, for years one of the intellectual leaders of the Socialist movement in Germany and one of its ablest and most representative publicists, said: [12]

"The one-sided battle against the congregations, as it is being carried on today in France, is merely a pruning of the boughs of the tree, which then merely flourishes all the more strongly. The ax must be laid to the roots."

[ [12] Die neue Zeit, 1903, vol. i, p. 506.

Genosse Dr. Erdmann, writing after the war had begun, said:

"We have no occasion to conceal the fact that Social-Democracy is hostile to the church—whether Catholic or Evangelical—and that we present our demands with special decision because we know that we shall thus break the power of the church." [13]

[ [13] Sozialistische Monatshefte, 1915, vol. i, p. 516.

Vorwärts headlined an article in January, 1918: "All religious systems are enemies of women." (The Socialists nevertheless had the effrontery during the campaign preceding the election of delegates to the National Assembly at Weimar in January to put out a placard saying: "Women, protect your religion! Vote for the Social-Democratic party of Germany!").

The initial activities of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils in Hamburg and Brunswick following the revolution were correctly described in a speech made in the National Assembly on March 11, 1919, by Deputy Mumm. He said:

"The revolutionary government in Hamburg has retained the bordells and abolished religious instruction. In Brunswick the school children of the capital, 1,500 in number, were assembled in the Cathedral by the people's commissioners for an anti-Christian Christmas celebration."

At the same session, Deputy Hellmann, a member of the Majority (parent) Socialist party, said in a speech in answer to Mumm:

"The church, like all social institutions, is subject to constant change, and will eventually disappear."

Quotations like the preceding could be multiplied indefinitely, as could also acts consistent with these anti-religious views. The first Minister of Cults (Kultusminister) appointed by the revolutionary government in Prussia was Adolf Hoffmann, a professed atheist, although this ministry has charge of the affairs of the church.

The Socialist literature and press in all countries abound in anti-religious utterances. To quote one is to give a sample of all. The Social-Demokraten of Stockholm, official organ of the Swedish Socialists and reckoned among the sanest, ablest and most conservative of all Social-Democratic press organs, forgets, too, that religion is a private matter. It reports a sermon by Archbishop Söderblom, wherein the speaker declared that the church must have enough expansive force to conquer the masses who are now coming to power in various lands, and adds this characteristic comment:

"The Archbishop is a brave man who is not afraid to install a motor in the venerable but antiquated skiff from the Lake of Genesareth. If only the boat will hold him up!"

This attitude of Socialism is comprehensible and logical, for no student of world history can deny that an established church has been in all ages and still is one of the strongest bulwarks of an autocratic state. From the very dawn of organized government, centuries before the Christian era, the priesthood, where it did not actually govern, has powerfully upheld the arm of civil authority and property rights. Even in democratic England it teaches the child to "be content in the station whereto it has pleased God to call me," and is thus a factor in upholding the class distinctions against which Socialism's whole campaign is directed. In opposing the church as an institution Social-Democracy is thus merely true to its cardinal tenets. If the power of the church be destroyed or materially weakened, a serious blow is dealt to the government which that church supported. People who, at the command of the church, have been unquestioningly rendering unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, begin to ask themselves: "But what things are Cæsar's?" And when the people begin seriously to consider this question, autocracy is doomed.

The effect of the Socialist campaign against the church began to make itself felt a decade or more before the war began. Withdrawals from the church became so frequent that the government was seriously concerned. The number of those who termed themselves Dissident (dissenter) or religionslos (without any religion) increased rapidly. Clergymen preached the doctrines of Christ to empty benches; religionslose Genossen preached the doctrines of class warfare and disloyalty to state to Socialist audiences that filled their meeting-places.

Thus the cancer ate its way into the vitals of the Empire.

CHAPTER IV.

Germany under the "Hunger-Blockade."

The men whose duty it was to take every measure to increase Germany's preparedness for war and her ability to carry on an extended conflict had long realized that the Empire had one very vulnerable point. This was her inability to feed and clothe her inhabitants and her consequent dependence on imports of foodstuffs and raw materials.

Germany in the days of her greatness occupied so large a place in the sun that one is prone to forget that this mighty empire was erected on an area much less than that of the State of Texas. Texas, with 262,290 square miles, was 53,666 square miles greater than the whole German Empire. And Germany's population was two-thirds that of the entire United States! Germany was, moreover, comparatively poor in natural resources. The March (Province) Brandenburg, in which Berlin is situated, is little more than a sandheap, and there are other sections whose soil is poor and infertile. Nor was it, like America, virgin soil; on the contrary, it had been cultivated for centuries.

Driven by stern necessity, the Germans became the most intelligent and successful farmers of the world. Their average yields of all crops per acre exceeded those of any other country, and were from one and a half to two times as large as the average yield in the United States. The German farmer raised two and one half times more potatoes per acre than the average for the United States. He was aided by an adequate supply of cheap farm labor and by unlimited supplies of potash at low prices, since Germany, among her few important natural resources, possessed a virtual monopoly of the world's potash supply.

Try as they would, however, the German farmers could not feed and clothe more than about forty of Germany's nearly seventy millions. Even this was a tremendous accomplishment, which can be the better appreciated if one attempts to picture the State of Texas feeding and clothing four of every ten inhabitants of the United States. Strenuous efforts were made by the German Government to increase this proportion. Moorlands were reclaimed and extensive projects for such reclamation were being prepared when the war came. The odds were too great, however, and the steady shift of population toward the cities made it increasingly difficult to cultivate all the available land and likewise increased the amount of food required, since there is an inevitable wastage in transportation. What this shift of population amounted to is indicated by the fact that whereas the aggregate population of the rural districts in 1871 was 63.9 per cent of the total population, it was but 40 per cent in 1910. During the same period the percentage of the total population living in cities of 100,000 population or over had increased from 4.8 to 21.3.

In the most favorable circumstances about three-sevenths of the food needed by Germany must be imported. The government had realized that a war on two fronts would involve a partial blockade, but neither the German Government nor any other government did or could foresee that a war would come which would completely encircle Germany in effect and make an absolute blockade possible. Even if this had been realized it would have made no essential difference, for it must always have remained impossible for Germany to become self-supporting.

Another factor increased the difficulties of provisioning the people. The war, by taking hundreds of able-bodied men and the best horses from the farms, made it from the beginning impossible to farm as intensively as under normal conditions, and resulted even in the second summer of the war in a greatly reduced acreage of important crops. Livestock, depleted greatly by slaughtering and by lack of fodder, no longer produced as much manure as formerly, and one of the main secrets of the intelligent farming-methods of the Germans was the lavish use of fertilizer. And thus, at a time when even the maximum production would have been insufficient, a production far below the normal average was being secured.

Germany's dependence on importations is shown by the import statistics for 1913. The figures are in millions of marks.

Cereals	1037.
Eggs	188.2
Fruits	148.8
Fish	135.9
Wheaten products	130.3
Animal fats	118.9
Butter	118.7
Rice	103.9
Southern fruits	101.2
Meats	81.4
Live animals	291.6
Coffee	219.7
Cacao	67.1

It will be observed that the importations of cereals (bread-stuffs and maize) alone amounted to roughly $260,000,000, without the further item of "wheaten products" for $32,500,000.

Fodder for animals was also imported in large quantities. The figures for cereals include large amounts of Indian corn, and oilcakes were also imported in the same year to the value of more than $29,600,000.

Germany was no more able to clothe and shoe her inhabitants than she was to feed them. Further imports for 1913 were (in millions of marks):

Cotton	664.1
Wool	511.7
Hides and skins	672.4
Cotton yarn	116.2

Flax and hemp	114.4
Woolen yarn	108.

Imports of chemicals and drugs exceeded $105,000,000; of copper, $86,000,000; of rubber and gutta-percha, $36,500,000; of leaf-tobacco, $43,500,000; of jute, $23,500,000; of petroleum, $17,400,000.

Of foodstuffs, Germany exported only sugar and vegetable oils in any considerable quantities. The primarily industrial character of the country was evidenced by her exportations of manufactures, which amounted in 1913 to a total of $1,598,950,000, and even to make these exportations possible she had imported raw materials aggregating more than $1,250,000,000.

The war came, and Germany was speedily thrown on her own resources. In the first months various neutrals, including the United States, succeeded in sending some foodstuffs and raw materials into the beleaguered land, but the blockade rapidly tightened until only the Scandinavian countries, Holland, and Switzerland could not be reached directly by it. Sweden, with a production insufficient for her own needs, soon found it necessary to stop all exports to Germany except of certain so-called "compensation articles," consisting chiefly of paper pulp and iron ore. A continuance of these exports was necessary, since Germany required payment in wares for articles which Sweden needed and could not secure elsewhere. The same was true of the other neutral countries mentioned. Denmark continued to the last to export foodstuffs to Germany, but she exported the same quantity of these wares to England. All the exports of foodstuffs and raw materials from all the neutrals during the war were but a drop in the bucket compared with the vast needs of a people of seventy millions waging war, and they played a negligible part in its course.

Although the German Government was confident that the war would last but a few months, its first food-conservation order followed on the heels of the mobilization. The government took over all supplies of breadstuffs and established a weekly ration of four metric pounds per person (about seventy ounces). Other similar measures followed fast. Meat was rationed, the weekly allowance varying from six to nine ounces in different parts of the Empire. [14] The Germans were not great meat-eaters, except in the cities. The average peasant ate meat on Sundays, and only occasionally in the middle of the week, and the ration fixed would have been adequate but for one thing. This was the disappearance of fats, particularly lard, from the market. The Germans consumed great quantities of fats, which took the place of meat to a large extent. They now found themselves limited to two ounces of butter, lard, and margarine together per week. Pork, bacon, and ham were unobtainable, and the other meats which made up the weekly ration were lean and stringy, for there were no longer American oilcakes and maize for the cattle, and the government had forbidden the use of potatoes, rye or wheat as fodder. There had been some twenty-four million swine in Germany at the outbreak of the war. There were but four million left at the end. Cattle were butchered indiscriminately because there was no fodder, and the survivors, undernourished, gave less and poorer meat per unit than normally.

[ [14] This allowance had dropped to less than five ounces in Prussia in the last months of the war.

How great a part milk pays in the feeding of any people is not generally realized. In the United States recent estimates are that milk in its various forms makes up no less than nineteen per cent of the entire food consumed. The percentage was doubtless much greater in Germany, where, as in all European countries, much more cheese is eaten per capita than in America. What the German farmer calls Kraftfutter, such concentrated fodder as oilcakes, maize-meal, etc., had to be imported, since none of these things were produced in Germany. The annual average of such importations in the years just preceding the war reached more than five million metric tons, and these importations were virtually all cut off before the end of 1917.

The result was that the supply of milk fell off by nearly one half. Only very young children, invalids, women in childbed and the aged were permitted to have any milk at all, and that only in insufficient quantities and of low grade. The city of Chemnitz boasted of the fact that it had been able at all times to supply a quarter of a liter (less than half a pint!) daily to every child under eight. That this should be considered worth boasting about indicates dimly what the conditions must have been elsewhere.

The value of eggs as protein-furnishing food is well known, but even here Germany was dependent upon other countries—chiefly Russia—for two-fifths of her entire consumption. Available imports dropped to a tenth of the pre-war figures, and the domestic production fell off greatly, the hens having been killed for food and also because of lack of fodder.

Restriction followed upon restriction, and every change was for the worse. The Kriegsbrot (war bread) was directed to be made with twenty per cent of potatoes or potato flour and rye. Barley flour was later added. Wheat and rye are ordinarily milled out around 70 to 75 per cent, but were now milled to 94 per cent. The bread-ration was reduced. The sugar-ration was set at 1-3/4 pounds monthly. American housewives thought themselves severely restricted when sugar was sold in pound packages and they could buy as much heavy molasses, corn syrups and maple syrup as they desired, but the 1-3/4-pound allowance of the German housewife represented the sum total of all sweets available per month.

By the autumn of 1916 conditions had become all but desperate. It is difficult for one who has not experienced it personally to realize what it means to subsist without rice, cereals such as macaroni, oatmeal, or butter, lard or oil (for two ounces of these articles are little better than none); to be limited to one egg each three weeks, or to five pounds of potatoes weekly; to have no milk for kitchen use, and even no spices; to steep basswood blossoms as a substitute for tea and use dandelion roots or roasted acorns as coffee for which there is neither milk nor sugar, and only a limited supply of saccharine. Germany had been a country of many and cheap varieties of cheese, and these took the place of meat to a great extent. Cheese disappeared entirely in August, 1916, and could not again be had.

In common with most European peoples, the Germans had eaten great quantities of fish, both fresh and salted or smoked. The bulk of the salted and smoked fish had come from Scandinavia and England, and the blockade cut off this supply. The North Sea was in the war-zone, and the German fishermen could not venture out to the good fishing-grounds. The German fishermen of the Baltic had, like their North Seacoast brethren, been called to the colors in great numbers. Their nets could not be repaired or renewed because there was no linen available. Fresh fish disappeared from view, and supplies of preserved fish diminished so greatly that it was possible to secure a small portion only every third or fourth week. Even this trifling ration could not always be maintained.

No German will ever forget the terrible Kohlrübenwinter (turnip winter) of 1916-17. It took its name from the fact that potatoes were for many weeks unobtainable, and the only substitute that could be had was coarse fodder-turnips. The lack of potatoes and other vegetables increased the consumption of bread, and even in the case of the better-situated families the ration was insufficient. The writer has seen his own children come into the house from their play, hungry and asking for a slice of bread, and go back to their games with a piece of turnip because there was no bread to give them. The situation of hard manual laborers was naturally even worse.

The turnip-winter was one of unusual severity, and it was marked by a serious shortage of fuel. Thus the sufferings from the cold were added to the pangs of hunger. There was furthermore already an insufficiency of warm clothing. Articles of wear were strictly rationed, and the children of the poorer classes were inadequately clad.

The minimum number of calories necessary for the nourishment of the average individual is, according to dietetic authorities, 3,000, and even this falls some 300 short of a full ration. Yet as early as December, 1916, the caloric value of the complete rations of the German was 1,344, and, if the indigestibility and monotony of the fare be taken into account, even less. To be continuously hungry, to rise from the table hungry, to go to bed hungry, was the universal experience of all but the very well-to-do. Not only was the food grossly insufficient in quantity and of poor quality, but the deadly monotony of the daily fare also contributed to break down the strength and, eventually, the very morale of the people. No fats being available, it was impossible to fry anything. From day to day the Germans sat down to boiled potatoes, boiled turnips and boiled cabbage, with an occasional piece of stringy boiled beef or mutton, and with the coarse and indigestible Kriegsbrot, in which fodder-turnips had by this time been substituted for potatoes. The quantity of even such food was limited.

A little fruit would have varied this diet and been of great dietetic value, but there was no fruit. Wo bleibt das Obst (what has become of the fruit?) cried the people, voicing unconsciously the demands of their bodies. The government, which had imported $62,500,000 worth of fruit in 1913, could do nothing. The comparatively few apples raised in Germany were mixed with pumpkins and carrots to make what was by courtesy called marmalade, and most of this went to the front, which also secured most of the smaller fruits. A two-pound can of preserved vegetables or fruits was sold to each family—not person—at Christmas time. This had to suffice for the year.

A delegation of women called on the mayor of Schöneberg, one of the municipalities of Greater Berlin, and declared that they and their families were hungry and must have more to eat.

"You will not be permitted to starve, but you must hunger," said the mayor. [15]

[ [15] The mayor's statement contains in German a play on words: Ihr sollt nicht verhungern, aber hungern müsst Ihr.

The other privations attendant upon hunger also played a great part in breaking down the spirit of the people. In order to secure even the official food-pittance, it was necessary to stand in queues for hours at a time. The trifling allowance of soap consisted of a substitute made largely of saponaceous clay. Starch was unobtainable, and there is a deep significance in the saying, "to take the starch out of one." The enormous consumption of tobacco at the front caused a serious shortage at home, and this added another straw to the burdens of the male part of the population. The shortage of cereals brought in its wake a dilution of the once famous German beer until it was little but colored and charged water, without any nourishment whatever.

The physical effects of undernutrition and malnutrition made themselves felt in a manner which brought them home to every man. Working-capacity dropped to half the normal, or even less. Mortality increased by leaps and bounds, particularly among the children and the aged. The death rate of children from 1 to 5 years of age increased 50 per cent; that of children from 5 to 15 by 55 per cent. In 1917 alone this increased death rate among children from 1 to 15 years meant an excess of deaths over the normal of more than 50,000 in the whole Empire. In the year 1913, 40,374 deaths from tuberculosis were reported in German municipalities of 15,000 inhabitants or more. The same municipalities reported 41,800 deaths from tuberculosis in the first six months of 1918, an increase of more than 100 per cent. In Berlin alone the death rate for all causes jumped from 13.48 per thousand for the first eight months of 1913 to 20.05 for the first eight months of 1918.

According to a report laid before the United Medical Societies in Berlin on December 18, 1918, the "hunger blockade" was responsible for 763,000 deaths in the Empire. These figures are doubtless largely based on speculation and probably too high, but one need not be a physician to know that years of malnutrition and undernutrition, especially in the case of children and the aged, mean a greatly increased death rate and particularly a great increase of tuberculosis. In addition to the excess deaths alleged by the German authorities to be directly due to the blockade, there were nearly 150,000 deaths from Spanish influenza in 1918. These have not been reckoned among the 763,000, but it must be assumed that many would have withstood the attack had they not been weakened by the privations of the four war-years.

The enthusiasm that had carried the people through the beginnings of their privations cooled gradually. No moral sentiments, even the most exalted, can prevail against hunger. Starving men will fight or steal to get a crust of bread, just as a drowning man clutches at a straw. There have been men in history whose patriotism or devotion to an idea has withstood the test of torture and starvation, but that these are the exception is shown by the fact that history has seen fit to record their deeds. The average man is not made of such stern stuff. Mens sana in corpore sano means plainly that there can be no healthy mind without a healthy body. Hungry men and women who see their children die for want of food naturally feel a bitter resentment which must find an object. They begin to ask themselves whether, after all, these sacrifices have been necessary, and to what end they have served.

The first answer to the question, What has compelled these sacrifices was, of course, for everybody, The war. But who is responsible for The War? Germany's enemies, answered a part of the people.

But there were two categories of Germans whose answer was another. On the one side were a few independent thinkers who had decided that Germany herself bore at least a large share of the responsibility; on the other side were those who had been taught by their leaders that all wars are the work of the capitalistic classes, and that existing governments everywhere are obstacles to the coming of a true universal brotherhood of man. These doctrines had been forgotten by even the Socialist leaders in the enthusiasm of the opening days of the struggle, but they had merely lain dormant, and now, as a result of sufferings and revolutionary propaganda by radical Socialists, they awakened. And in awakening they spread to a class which had heretofore been comparatively free from their contagion.

Socialism, and more especially that radical Socialism which finds its expression in Bolshevism, Communism and similar emanations, is especially the product of discontent, and discontent is engendered by suffering. The whole German people had suffered terribly, but two categories of one mighty class had undergone the greatest hardships. These were the Unterbeamten and the Mittelbeamten, the government employees of the lowest and the middle classes. This was the common experience of all belligerent countries except the United States, which never even remotely realized anything of what the hardships of war mean. Wages of the laboring classes generally kept pace with the increasing prices of the necessaries of life, and in many instances outstripped them. But the government, whose necessities were thus exploited by the makers of ammunition, the owners of small machine-shops and the hundreds of other categories of workers whose product was required for the conduct of the war, could not—or at least did not—grant corresponding increases of salary to its civil servants. The result was a curious social shift, particularly observable in the restaurants and resorts of the better class, whose clientele, even in the second year of the war, had come to be made up chiefly of men and women whose bearing and dress showed them to be manual workers. The slender remuneration of the Beamten had fallen so far behind the cost of living that they could neither frequent these resorts nor yet secure more than a bare minimum of necessaries. The result was that thousands of these loyal men and women, rendered desperate by their sufferings, began in their turn to ponder the doctrines which they had heard, but rejected in more prosperous times. Thus was the ground further prepared for the coming of the revolution.

There was yet another factor which played a great part in increasing the discontent of the masses. Not even the genius of the German Government for organization could assure an equitable distribution of available foodstuffs. Except where the supply could be seized or controlled at the source, as in the case of breadstuffs and one or two other products, the rationing system broke down. The result of the government's inability to get control of necessaries of life was the so-called Schleichhandel, literally "sneak trade," the illegitimate dealing in rationed wares. Heavy penalties were imposed for this trade, applicable alike to buyer and seller, and many prosecutions were conducted, but to no avail. The extent of the practice is indicated by a remark made by the police-president of a large German city, who declared that if every person who had violated the law regarding illegitimate trade in foodstuffs were to be arrested, the whole German people would find itself in jail.

It has often been declared that money would buy anything in Germany throughout the war. This statement is exaggerated, but it is a fact that the well-to-do could at all times secure most of the necessaries and some of the luxuries of life. But the prices were naturally so high as to be out of the reach of the great mass of the people. Butter cost as much as $8 a pound in this illegitimate trade, meat about the same, eggs 40 to 50 cents apiece, and other articles in proportion. The poorer people—and this, in any country, means the great majority—could not pay these prices. Themselves forced to go hungry and see their children hunger while the wealthy bourgeoisie had a comparative abundance, they were further embittered against war and against all governments responsible for war, including their own.

The German soldiers at the front had fared well by German standards. In the third year of the war the writer saw at the front vast stores of ham, bacon, beans, peas, lentils and other wares that had not been available to the civil population since the war began. Soldiers home on furlough complained of being continuously hungry and returned to the lines gladly because of the adequate rations there.

With the coming of the fourth year, however, conditions began to grow bad even at the front, and the winter of 1917-18 brought a marked decrease of rations, both in quantity and quality. Cavalrymen and soldiers belonging to munition or work columns ate the potatoes issued for their horses. They ground in their coffee-mills their horses' scant rations of barley and made pancakes. A high military official who took part in the drive for the English Channel that started in March, 1918, assured the writer that the chief reason for the failure to reach the objective was that the German soldiers stopped to eat the provisions found in the enemy camps, and could not be made to resume the advance until they had satisfied their hunger and assured themselves that none of the captured stores had been overlooked. Ludendorff, hearing of this, is said to have declared: "Then it's all over." This, while probably untrue, would have been a justified and prophetic summing-up of the situation.

Not only were the soldiers hungry by this time, but they were insufficiently clad. Their boots were without soles, and they had neither socks nor the Fusslappen (bandages) which most of them preferred to wear instead of socks. A shirt issued from the military stores in the summer of 1918 to a German soldier-friend of the writer was a woman's ribbed shirt, cut low in the neck and gathered with a ribbon.

The military reverses of this summer thus found a soldiery hungry and ill-clad, dispirited by complaints from their home-folk of increasing privations, and, as we shall see in the following chapter, subjected to a revolutionary propaganda of enormous extent by radical German Socialists and by the enemy.

CHAPTER V.

Internationalism at Work.

No people ever entered upon a war with more enthusiasm or a firmer conviction of the justice of their cause than did the Germans. Beset for generations on all sides by potential enemies, they had lived under the constant threat of impending war, and the events of the first days of August, 1914, were hailed as that "end of terror" (ein Ende mit Schrecken) which, according to an old proverb, was preferable to "terror without end" (Schrecken ohne Ende). The teachings of internationalism were forgotten for the moment even by the Socialists. The veteran August Bebel, one of the founders of German Socialism, had never been able entirely to overcome an inborn feeling of nationalism, and had said in one famous speech in the Reichstag that it was conceivable that a situation could arise where even he would shoulder die alte Büchse (the old musket) and go to the front to defend the Fatherland.

Such a situation seemed even to the extremest internationalists to have arisen. At the memorable meeting in the White Hall of the royal palace in Berlin on August 4, 1914, the Socialist members of the Reichstag were present and joined the members of the bourgeois parties in swearing to support the Fatherland. The Kaiser retracted his reference to vaterlandslose Gesellen. "I no longer know any parties," he said. "I know only Germans." Hugo Haase, one of the Socialist leaders and one of the small group of men whose efforts later brought about the German revolution and the downfall of the empire and dynasty, was carried away like his colleagues by the enthusiasm of the moment. He promised in advance the support of his party to the empire's war measures, and when, a few hours later, the first war-appropriation measure, carrying five billion marks, was laid before the deputies, the Socialists voted for it without a dissenting voice, and later joined for the first time in their history in the Kaiserhoch, the expression of loyalty to monarch and country with which sessions of the Reichstag were always closed.

Nothing could testify more strongly to the universal belief that Germany was called upon to fight a defensive and just war. For not only had the Socialist teachings, as we have seen, denounced all warfare as in the interests of capital alone, but their party in the Reichstag included one man whose anti-war convictions had already resulted in his being punished for their expression. This was Dr. Karl Liebknecht, who had been tried at the Supreme Court in Leipsic in 1907 on a charge of high treason for publishing an anti-military pamphlet, convicted of a lesser degree of treason and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. Haase himself had bitterly attacked militarism and war in a speech in the Reichstag in April, 1913, in opposition to the government's military bills, and only his parliamentary immunity protected him from sharing Liebknecht's fate. One of the strongest defenders of the war in Bavaria was Kurt Eisner, already an intellectual Bolshevist and Communist, who had been compelled earlier to leave the editorial staff of the Vorwärts because of his far-going radicalism and dreamy impracticality.

All these men were subsequently bitterly attacked by Socialists of enemy lands for their surrender of principles. The feeling that dictated these attacks is comprehensible, but adherents of the my-country-right-or-wrong brand of patriotism are precluded from making such attacks. It cannot be permitted to any one to blow hot and cold at the same time. He may not say: "I shall defend my country right or wrong, but you may defend yours only if it is right." To state the proposition thus baldly is to destroy it. Unquestioning patriotism is applicable everywhere or nowhere, and its supporters cannot logically condemn its manifestation by the German Socialists in the opening months of the World War.

The first defection in the ranks of the Socialists came in the second war session of the Reichstag in December, 1914, when Liebknecht, alone among all the members of the house, refused to vote for the government's war-credit of five billion marks. Amid scenes of indignant excitement he tried to denounce the war as imperialistic and capitalistic, but was not permitted to finish his remarks.

There has been observable throughout the allied countries and particularly in America a distinct tendency to regard Liebknecht as a hero and a man of great ability and moral courage. But he was neither the one nor the other. He was a man of great energy which was exclusively devoted to destroying, and without any constructive ability whatever, and what was regarded as moral courage in him was rather the indifferent recklessness of fanaticism combined with great egotism and personal vanity. Liebknecht's career was in a great degree determined by his feeling that he was destined to carry on the work and fulfil the mission of his father, Wilhelm Liebknecht, the friend of Marx, Bebel and Engels, and one of the founders of the Socialist party in Germany. But he lacked his father's mental ability, commonsense and balance, and the result was that he became the enfant terrible of his party at an age when the designation applied almost literally.

Educated as a lawyer, the younger Liebknecht devoted himself almost exclusively to politics and to writing on political subjects. Last elected to the Reichstag from the Potsdam district in 1912, he distinguished himself in April, 1913, by a speech in which he charged the Krupp directors with corrupting officials and military officers. He also named the Kaiser and Crown Prince in his speech. The result was an investigation and trial of the army officers involved. In making these charges Liebknecht performed a patriotic service, but even here his personal vanity asserted itself. Before making the speech he sent word to the newspapers that he would have something interesting to say, and requested a full attendance of reporters. He delayed his speech after the announced time because the press-gallery was not yet full.

A consistent enemy of war, he attacked the international armament industry in a speech in the Reichstag on May 10, 1914. In the following month he charged the Prussian authorities with trafficking in titles. But in all the record of his public activities—and he was forty-three years old when the war broke out—one will search in vain for any constructive work or for any evidence of statesmanlike qualities.

Liebknecht visited America in 1910. When he returned to Germany he attacked America in both speeches and writings as the most imperialistic and capitalistic of all countries. He declared that in no European country would the police dare handle citizens as they did in America, and asserted that the American Constitution is "not worth the paper it is written upon." In Berlin on December 17, 1918, he said to the writer: