thrive in the German character. The German is supercritical. He delights in national fault-finding. He takes naturally and kindly to a party of opposition. He is devoted to speculative philosophy, and the dreams of the classical socialist writers appeal to him. His phrenological bump of the ideal is highly developed, and political ideals that would in other countries be regarded as impractical dreams are in Germany the sort of thing around which a party can be built, and a party, too, which will submit to the most rigid and practical party discipline—the sort of discipline that every German has learned to know the value of in his army training. Not alone is the German character the sort which would encourage the growth of socialism, but German political conditions, which were inherent in the varied political development of those countries which were forged together into the German Empire, have been such as must inevitably have united into a party of opposition men who had ideals of true liberty. The German states were securely bound together when the empire was agreed to, but they were not amalgamated. They remained states whose political development covered the whole range from actual feudalism to those republican cities with well-developed constitutional government. Even in dominating Prussia constitutionalism was only skin deep; the real government was junkerism and militarism. The Junkers are slow to give up their traditions of feudal authority. Their deep-seated conviction to-day is that they should rule by authority not by majority. There is many a Junker aristocrat who believes as devoutly in his divine right to stand in a position of authority toward his humbler, though perhaps wealthier fellow citizens, as does the Emperor himself.
Few nations have had a more trying task than Germany has had in disentangling the confused political rights as found in the governmental institutions of the various states, in reducing to proper proportions the dual powers of state diets and Imperial Reichstag. Popular representation at first had little meaning. Part of the work which the Socialists set out to do was to develop it. Tangible form was to be given to those constitutional provisions defining the rights of the people, and a party with something more than Junker agrarianism or clerical conservatism in its programme was needed. The Social Democrats took that as their work. The development of true liberty demanded the abolishing of caste and the undermining of class privileges. Nothing could be more to the taste of those men who directed the socialist movement. The Socialists believe that the political task which they have to accomplish is the development of a living constitution and the impression of modern ideas of freedom on Government and Reichstag.
They have grown to be a party with over three million votes, but they feel they have as yet accomplished small part of their work. They have seen the empire become a great political and commercial power, but there has been little progress toward individual freedom and equality. They declare that constitutional government, as found in Germany, is a semblance and a pretence, not a reality, and they are largely right. The Reichstag is not truly representative, and if it were it would still be without authority. The Emperor, the army, the aristocrats, the bureaucracy, and the police govern Germany. The vote of a citizen has less direct influence than in any other country with a constitutional government.
The power of the police is especially obnoxious to the German Socialists. It is true that the police do interfere in about every relation of life, and while from one point of view the result is the most orderly government in the world, there is ample ground for irritation at the nature of the espionage. Nowhere else, not even in Russia, do the police so completely constitute themselves the guardians of the public. There is complaint, too, against the tendency to give the widest possible interpretation to the penal code, to make every conceivable action liable to punishment, to restrict the freedom of meetings, of public speech, and of the press, and to invoke the laws of lese-majesty in a way that is regarded as barbarous and intolerable.
So much for the general grounds upon which may stand a party of protest. There is one specific grievance, however, which has had more influence in building up the Social-Democratic party than almost all other factors together. The question of dear food or cheap food makes an issue that is easily comprehended. The natural political enemies of the Socialists, the Junkers, want nothing in politics more than high protective duties on agricultural prod-Vol. XXXVII.—23
