Produced by Brian Foley, Jeannie Howse and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)






       *       *       *       *       *

    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
    |                                                           |
    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
    | been preserved.                                           |
    |                                                           |
    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
    |                                                           |
    +-----------------------------------------------------------+

       *       *       *       *       *




THE NEW GERMANY

BY
GEORGE YOUNG

_Author of "Portugal Old and Young"; "Nationalism and War in
the Balkans"; "Le Corps de Droit Ottoman," etc._




NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE
1920




_Printed in Great Britain_




AUTHOR'S PREFACE


The following account of events in Germany during the period from the
Armistice to the Treaty of Versailles was written mostly in the summer
of 1919. But the events of the succeeding period from the signature of
the Treaty to its ratification during the autumn and winter call for
no alteration and but little addition to the text. The six months
hereinafter described from February to August were a--perhaps
the--critical period for Germany and for Europe. It was the formative
and creative stage for New Germany and for New Europe. If the whole
phase through which Central Europe passed after the collapse of the
Central Powers is considered as the genesis of a new age, then the
week of actual revolution was a phase of intense heat and fierce
energy, in which the old political organisms were boiled down to their
most simple and essential types and in which the germs of new
political institutions appeared in primitive forms such as the
Councils. Thereafter came the period under review, in which the old
and new types fought for a survival of the fittest; and the old--aided
by the general cooling off of the revolution--to some extent
reasserted their supremacy. Indeed during this last winter I have even
occasionally thought that the types of old Germany might succeed in
suppressing the new, thereby making it necessary to change the title
and tone of this book. But I know this impression is largely due to
the pessimistic and perverted point of view towards all events in
Central Europe affected by the British Press with few exceptions. For
our "Dailies" Germany is only a subject for "scare heads" and
"stories," in which adventurous special correspondents see the Kaiser
emerging from the Netherlands to re-ravage Europe like the
Brontosaurus out of the Nyassa swamp. Whereas the reality seems to be
that reaction has moderated as the revolution became more amenable,
and that a "modus vivendi" between the two is now more of a
possibility than it was.

It now seems less probable than it did last summer that the solution
in Germany will be a "second revolution" as in Russia. Weak as it is
politically, the present German governmental system seems too strong
police-ically to be overthrown by force. The situation to-day in
Germany rather suggests that in Great Britain two years hence than
that in Russia two years ago.

The new Germany of this winter of 1919-20 is essentially, then, the
same as that of last summer. It is not the old Germany of the autumn
of 1914, nor the young Germany of the autumn of 1917. But it has
developed rapidly in some respects in the course of this winter. Thus
the rough and ready rule by Frei-Corps expeditions and garrisons has
been supplemented by a gendarmerie (_Sicherheitswehr_); and the
middle-class militia (_Bürgerwehr_) has been replaced by an
organisation of armed special constables (_Einwohnerwehr_).

The effect and perhaps the object of this change is to obscure the class
character of the conflict between reaction and revolution--between
property and the proletariat. The police is no longer a weapon for use
by a possible militarist reaction or monarchist restoration, and in
return it will be supported by the moderate revolutionaries.

Reaction and revolution are reuniting as reconstruction; and this
tendency appears in all regions of political activity. Thus the
revolutionary Council system now seems established as a secondary
representative institution supplementary to Parliament.

This development is, however, not due to maturity of political
experience--as it would be in similar conditions in an Anglo-Saxon
community--but merely to mortal weakness. German political vitality,
owing to mediæval calamities, has always been low in modern times.
Now, as a result of a four years' frenzy of war and a fifth year in a
fever of revolution, German political vitality is a very flickering
flame. So long as France and Great Britain continue to enforce the
principles and procedures of the Treaty of Versailles and of the Paris
Council, Germany will remain a danger to Europe--a danger, not because
of its recent relapse into a Conservative reaction, nor even because
of the decreasing risk of a Communist "second" revolution, but because
Germany is an essential and vital member of our European body politic
that is being kept in a morbid, even moribund, condition by the
provisions of the peace. The Paris diplomatists have not yet learnt
the lesson taught by a great French diplomatist two hundred years ago
at the time of the last great European settlement but one. M. de
Callières then wrote in his treatise on diplomacy--"We must think of
the States of which Europe is composed as being joined ... in such a
way that they may be regarded as members of one Republic, and that no
considerable change can take place in any one of them without
affecting the condition or disturbing the peace of all the others."

A majority of the rank and file of Greater Britain does so think of
Germany to-day, but unless and until it can compel its rulers to act
accordingly it will not get peace. Peace is only for men of good will.

    CHRISTMAS, 1919.
        65, STRAND ON THE GREEN,
            CHISWICK.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER I
                                                                  PAGE
  THE REVOLUTION                                                     1

  CHAPTER II

  THE REACTION                                                      26

  CHAPTER III

  THE COUNCIL REPUBLICS                                             63

  CHAPTER IV

  RUIN AND RECONSTRUCTION                                          120

  CHAPTER V

  COUNCIL GOVERNMENT                                               163

  CHAPTER VI

  THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES                                         198

  CHAPTER VII

  THE CONSTITUTION                                                 242

  INDEX                                                            327




THE NEW GERMANY




THE NEW GERMANY




CHAPTER I

THE REVOLUTION


When, in January, 1919, I resigned my commission and made my way out
to Berlin as correspondent for the _Daily News_, I had two purposes in
view. One was to find out to what extent we had really won the war--in
the only way it could be won--by forcing the German people into
revolution; and incidentally to take any opportunity that might offer
of furthering that revolution. My second purpose was to find out what
prospects there were of making a more or less permanent peace--in the
only way it could be made--by establishing the forces of reform in
Germany; and incidentally to point out any openings favourable to the
furthering of such a peace. The following book brings together and
sums up conclusions communicated to the _Daily News_ from time to
time and is put forward as an answer to the double question: Have we
won the war against Prussianism and have we made a permanent peace?

The answer to this question was only to be got in Berlin. The first
mistake made by the soldiers and workers who had won the war was in
not insisting on their representatives making peace with the German
people and at Berlin. An experience of twenty years in diplomacy,
beginning with the arbitration treaties of Lord Pauncefote and ending
with those of Lord Bryce, followed by two years of war experience,
beginning with political secret service and ending in the ranks, had
convinced me from the first that true peace could only be got by
developing the forces of democracy of the defeated peoples centering
in Berlin, and not by any bickerings between diplomatic formulæ of the
victorious Governments collected in Paris. That is why I preferred
going as a journalist to Berlin rather than in any other capacity to
Paris. And that is why the following papers are published. They show
that anyone who spent the first six months of 1919 in Berlin and the
big German towns would have seen easily enough how it was that, in
spite of military occupations and religious thanksgivings and bonfires
and bonuses all round, we were not winning the war but losing it: and
how, in spite of territorial partitions and financial reparations, and
signatures with gold pens and the setting-up of a League of Nations,
we were not making peace but manufacturing wars. We have not yet won
the war because we have not as yet supported in Germany the
progressive--that is, the revolutionary--elements and suppressed the
Prussian--that is, the reactionary--spirit: while we have, of late,
been really losing the war by actually assisting German reaction
against German revolution. And we are doing this just from the
ignorance of our democracy and the _insouciance_ of our diplomacy.

Our democracy has been prevented from ascertaining, and our diplomacy
has been precluded from understanding what the German revolution
really means, both to Germany and to Great Britain. Although we are
slow to understand foreign movements, yet ignorance of such a movement
as this would have been impossible but for the conditions under which
the war closed. The German revolution, banned, boycotted, and
blockaded, became to us a stone of offence, an odious ruin of the war,
and so we failed to recognise it as the only possible foundation stone
for peace.

The six months I spent in Germany were none too much to realise the
radical and rapid changes going on; and I can see how difficult it has
been for English readers to get an idea of what is really happening
there from the little that has been written about it. They cannot do
so at all unless they clear their minds of the cartoons and
caricatures and clichés forced on them during the last five years by
the propaganda and the Press. It is no use drawing Germany from the
life for people who still have before their eyes the "Boches" and
"Bolsheviks" of _Punch_ and _John Bull_. One has, indeed, to clear
away two strata of misrepresentation, that of our Government and Press
and that of the German Government and Press; for the latter is as much
opposed to the German revolution as the former.

It would have been better for Germany had it shown more courage and
collapsed less completely last autumn. A few weeks' patient endurance
under punishment in a losing fight would have gone far towards
restoring it some measure of the sympathies of the civilised world.
While the consequent occupation of the whole country would have
brought us into direct contact with the German revolution, and would
have prevented the fatal split between reformers and revolutionaries,
between Majority and Independent Socialists. As it was, we English
were left to draw such conclusions as we could from the reports of the
few correspondents who penetrated to Berlin. But, with two exceptions,
the English Press could at this time publish nothing about Germany
that was not merely malevolent. And of the few Englishmen in Berlin as
correspondents in January, almost all were replaced before the Treaty
of Peace by foreign Jews who would supply the sort of propaganda
poppycock with which public opinion is still being poisoned.

What people in England wanted to know was whether the German
revolution was a real riddance of the evil we had been fighting and a
real renascence of good that we could favour; whether it had gone far
enough and deep enough to be a sincere repentance and a sufficient
remediation. For, unless Germany was born again, it could not enter
the community of nations, and until it did so, there could be no true
peace.

They could guess that Kaiserism was dead and gone and Junkerism down
and out. But even so picturesque and positive an event as the fall of
Kaiserism had been only baldly mentioned in a bare telegram of a line
or two. How could the British public realise that the Black Eagle of
Prussia was no Phoenix and that the blaze of November 9 had left
nothing of it but a bad odour and a white feather.

But in Berlin there could be no doubt. Kaiserism was dead--deader even
than Tsarism--because the Kaiser was still alive. His shot-shattered
and mob-swept palace was the only reminder of him. And every Berliner
had more or less vivid recollections of his fall, recollections too
lamentable, too ludicrous, to allow of any restoration of the Kaiser
legend even now.

After reading your morning paper about revolution in Dublin and revolt
in Glasgow and reconstruction in London, as you walk down to your
office past the Dutch decorum of Kensington Palace, the Scotch
skimpiness of St. James's, or the generous Germanosities of Buckingham
Palace, does it ever occur to you to wonder what goes on in a palace
when there is a revolution?

Well, this is what happened to the Kaiserschloss in Berlin on November
8.

The curious crowd that always collects outside the house of anyone
mentioned in the papers, whether it's an absconded postmaster or an
abdicated potentate, found that the sentries no longer challenged
them, and first filtered, then flooded into the inner courts.
Thereupon the police and guards left, and the palace remained in
charge only of the Kastellan and a few servants and soldiers. All
doors were kept locked, and beyond some shouting everything was
orderly, for the prestige of the Imperial precincts still prevailed.

Then one Schwieringer, not otherwise distinguished, made his way to
the Kastellan and got leave to address the crowd from a window. Having
draped the balcony with a red cloth borrowed for the purpose, he
declared the palace national property. This broke the spell somewhat.
The rest of the soldiers left, and the crowd became noisy.

Late in the afternoon came Liebknecht, who engaged another balcony,
borrowed more red curtains, made another speech, and after holding a
sort of levée in the Throne Room left again. Later came soldiers and
hoisted a red flag. So far the Kastellan had remained master of the
situation, conducting his unwelcome visitors through the rooms,
unlocking and locking behind him as on ordinary occasions with any
ordinary tourists.

Then on November 10 came one Bujakowski, with a Slavonic eye for the
possibilities of the situation. Having collected such soldiers and
civilians as were hanging about, he made them a speech, and called on
them to elect a council, and himself Commandant of the Castle, which
they did. He then said he must have a suitable uniform. The council
agreed, and appointed a delegation to make selections from the
Imperial wardrobe.

Happy delegates--happy, happy Bujakowski! Five hundred uniforms and,
say, five pieces to each. How many combinations does that give in
which to find the perfect expression of a Spartacist commandant of a
Hohenzollern castle. He did his best in the time no doubt. Delegate
Schwartz, try a combination of those English and Hungarian uniforms!
Delegate Schmidt, see if that hunting costume goes with a Turkish fez!
History does not record the result, beyond a cavilling incrimination
about a diamond-headed cane. But it must have been effective, for the
Commandant returned from the Reichstag with his commission confirmed.
The rest of the company played up to his spirited lead, and the next
morning his "adjutant" attempted a _coup d'état_. Bujakowski
suppressed it with a revolver, but was, however, deposed a day or two
later by an ex-convict, who generously appointed him his secretary.

These three men then formed a triumvirate, which spent most of its
time making excursions in fancy dress with the imperial cars, and,
oddly enough, kept the castle in fairly good condition. It was not
until the sailors' revolutionary corps turned them out that all order
disappeared. Some ten commandants then succeeded each other rapidly.
The seventh shot the sixth, and was knocked on the head by the eighth.
The palace became a resort of bad characters, and was stripped bare.
Eventually, it was retaken by force, and the sailors were ejected.

Berliners shake their heads over the loss, estimated in millions (of
war marks). But I don't know that there is much to lament. Personally,
I am grateful to Bujakowski. His burlesque buffoonery has exorcised
the Imperial incubus that still brooded over the deserted shrine of
departed littleness, and I forgive him for his share in destroying or
dispersing some of the ugliest _objets d'art_ in Europe.

Kaiserism died when William the Second fled to Amerongen and
Bujakowski broke into his wardrobe. Nor has it been revived by the
revulsion in favour of William of Hohenzollern that we have evoked by
our proposal to put him on his trial in England. We have thereby
rallied in his support many adherents of the monarchical principle who
had previously abandoned him, and by persisting in making a martyr of
him, by taking him out of this German pillory and by putting him on an
international pedestal, we have already opened the door to a
restoration of the Hohenzollern dynasty as a constitutional monarchy.
This would mean a restoration of Junkerism and Prussianism, but not of
Kaiserism. That peculiar blend of divine right and demagogy is gone
for ever.

And what about Junkerism? That cannot be so shortly answered.
Junkerism expresses itself in both regions of the ruling class to
which Germany has been hitherto subjected--the civil and the military.
It is the evil genius of both those great services; and seldom has the
world produced public services with so much power for good in them and
so much evil as in the German army and bureaucracy. And it is
indisputable that the fate of Germany and the future of Europe now
depend on whether the revolutionary spirit is strong enough to
exorcise the evil genius of Prussianism and of Junkerism from the army
and civil service. But the question as to how far, so far, Germany's
good angel has fired its bad one out can only be answered as yet by a
careful and impartial observation of events in Germany since the
revolution. And if these events seem to suggest that the revolution
has lost its impetus and that reaction has dominated it, let us
remember that the results of a renascence of public conscience, such
as occurred in the November revolutions, should be estimated by
comparing the concrete conditions of to-day, not with the abstract
principles then for a time extant, but with the concrete conditions
existing before the upheaval.

As most have already got or can easily get a general knowledge of what
general conditions in Germany were before the revolution of November
and of what were the general principles promulgated by the revolution,
much of what follows will consist of evidence as to how far the
revolution has so far failed in realising those principles. For
revolution has now resulted in a reaction in which every vantage point
gained by the first revolutionary rush is counter-attacked and every
early victory is contested again. As every consequent loss cannot be
referred back to the deadlock before the offensive the general
impression is that of failure. But the Prussianism that now fills
German prisons with political suspects is rather a reflection of
reaction abroad than a revival of the ancient _régime_.

By the first rush of revolution in November 1918, the military power
of the officer caste was broken and the political power of land and
money was reduced to insignificance. But there was no strong obstacle
to their recovery, and the power of the bureaucracy was unimpaired.
Though the instigators of the crimes of the old _régime_ had been
removed, the instruments remained; while the 'Independent'
intellectuals, the public prosecutors of those crimes, were before
long voted down. And yet before we refuse absolution to the new German
democracy we must be quite sure that these relapses are real
unregeneracy and not reactions caused by fear of Russian revolution on
the one side or Allied retribution on the other. We can only judge of
this by reviewing the revolution.

The history of the German revolution can be shortly described and
sharply defined. After the first explosion on November 9 came a month
of equilibrium between revolution and reaction. Then a month of which
the first fortnight was a swing slowly to the right until the breach
with the Independents on December 24, and a swing swiftly the second
fortnight until the fighting with the Spartacists in January.
Thereafter a month of rapid return to the point where it was before
the explosion, a point reached with the formation of the Coalition
Government by the National Assembly on February 13. Indeed the
Government of Scheidemann only differed from that of Max von Baden in
being one degree more to the left, a development which was due in any
case apart from the revolution.

The German revolution is peculiar in having reached its highest point
at once and in having then relapsed to where it started from without
any positive reaction. This in itself suggests that it was due in its
origin to external forces--propaganda from Russia on the one side and
pressure from us on the other. Our military and naval pressure broke
first the prestige then the power of Kaiserism and Militarism, while
the Russian precedent gave the forces of rebellion and revolution a
practical example how to express themselves in co-ordinated councils
of workmen and soldiers--the Soviet system. We knocked German
Kaiserism out of the saddle, and Russia gave German Socialism a leg
up. And that's why it went so far so fast.

That's also why it never got anywhere. For it came to power before it
developed its own personalities and policies, and it had, therefore,
to put its trust in pre-revolutionary politicians. The Council system
had no time to produce leaders--men with enough confidence in their
own position and enough character to impose themselves on the
permanent officials. The Central Council--the true revolutionary
Executive--and the Congress of Councils--the true revolutionary
Legislature--never got any power. It was all monopolised by the
People's Commissioners, who were not really a revolutionary
institution at all, but an ordinary Provisional Government of
parliamentarians. And though they nominally held their mandate from
the Congress of Councils a majority of them considered themselves as
trustees for a Constituent Assembly. Such parliamentarians could work
well enough with the permanent officials, and, indeed, welcomed their
assistance. Whereas the councils, of course, came into violent
collision with them.

Where the council system prevailed, as in the army, it made a real
revolution, and broke the officer caste until the Frei-Corps replaced
the conscript army. But the workmen were not so drastic in the civil
service as were the soldiers in the cadres, and they allowed the
parliamentarians to spare the Amalekite. Only the political heads of
departments were replaced by Social Democrats; and, in one case I
know, a revolutionary Minister allowed his predecessor, out of
courtesy, to keep his official residence. This was, of course, all
very nice, but it meant that the old machine was not broken up, nor
even brought under control. The result was that a coalition between
the mere reformers among the commissioners and the civil servants was
enough to counter-balance the more revolutionary commissioners and the
councils; until finally external circumstances determined the deadlock
in favour of the former.

The German revolution never took its Bastille in the Wilhelmstrasse.
The sentries set by the Soldiers' Councils at the doors of the
Government offices, who loudly demanded your pass and only looked
foolish if you ignored them, were symbolic of the failure of the
German revolution. So insignificant were these sentinels of revolution
that no one saw the significance when they were finally replaced by
steel-helmeted Frei-Corps mercenaries last April. By the first week of
December it had become evident that the course of events was leading
away from the Congress of Councils to the Constituent Assembly, and
away from social revolution to political reconstruction. The Central
Council that should have been the driving-wheel of the Socialist
engine was becoming no more than a drag shoe on the old State coach.

Before the German revolution was a month old--that is, by the end of
the first week of December--it was entering its second phase, in which
the Parliamentary Commissioners having ousted the proletarian councils
from control, then divided among themselves into reformers and
revolutionaries. And at the end of the second phase, early in January,
we find that the reformers have ousted the revolutionaries.

This came about thus. The German Social Democratic Party was
professedly revolutionary. Its political attitude had been
traditionally one of refusal of all co-operation or even compromise
with the imperial political system. On this negative basis it had been
possible to combine in a common front comrades of very different
points of view and of political thought. But this superficial
solidarity could not stand the strain of the war. A sense of
patriotism carried one section--the Majority Socialists--first into
countenancing and then into supporting the Government; while pacifist
sentiment against war in general, and this war in particular, carried
the minority into more obstinate opposition. This finally split the
party much as it split our Labour Party. The Majority Social-Democrats
moved towards the Government, while the Government towards the end of
the war came to meet them. Until finally the Ministry of Prince Max of
Baden, that ended the war, not only represented the Reichstag
majority, but also the Majority Social-Democrats.

When Prince Max went down in the revolution, he remitted the reins of
government to Ebert and Scheidemann. They, knowing that alone they could
not rule the whirlwind, called in the Minority Social-Democrats--the
Independents, offering them equal representation in the Cabinet, then
called the People's Commissaries, and in the Central Council. This
arrangement was ratified by the Congress of Councils, though very
perfunctorily, as it was considered only a provisional makeshift.

Now, while the Social-Democrats of the Majority were just
parliamentary reformers, the Independents of the Minority, Haase and
Kautsky, were revolutionaries. Liebknecht was a radical revolutionary
who would not come into the Coalition. Consequently, whereas Ebert and
Scheidemann considered themselves as merely Commissioners to prepare a
Constituent Assembly, the Independents considered themselves
Commissaries for the Congress of Councils. The former considered the
revolution was probably unnecessary, and in any case had done its work
in preparing the way for universal suffrage and a united Germany. The
latter considered that the revolution had only begun, and could only
do its work through the Soviet system and a general socialisation.

The first serious difference came over the Poles, with whom the
Independents had practically concluded an arrangement which was,
however, upset by Landsberg, a Jew from Posen, one of the People's
Commissaries. Then came serious differences over German policy
towards the Entente. The Independents were in favour of admitting
culpability in the war crisis, Belgium, submarine warfare, etc., and
of accepting such liability as might be shown to be equitable, while
frankly discussing such assets as could be realised in payment. This
the Majority rejected, preferring a negative policy of passive
inaction. But the final breach came over internal policy and the use
of force against the revolutionaries, the Communists, who were trying
to force the revolution out of the rut of parliamentary reform into
which it was slipping.

This Communist Left, commanded but not controlled by Liebknecht, was
working for a second revolution in alliance with Russian agents. Its
fighting faction, that called itself "Spartacus"--with the accent on
the second syllable--was strong in the industrial districts of the
centre and west, among the sailors in the coast towns, and in Berlin.
Its ranks were filled rapidly with discontented workmen, disbanded
soldiers, and "derailed" youths. Rifles were plentiful, and against
such irregulars, supported by sailors, the Government was at first
helpless. But as the regulars that had kept their ranks returned from
the front it was found that some regiments were ready to act against
the mob. Such a policy was denounced by the Independents, Haase and
Kautsky, while Ebert, perhaps also Scheidemann, had doubts; but
Landsberg, who had found a strong man in Noske, the Prussian War
Minister, drove matters to a breach. On the first fighting with the
sailors at the Marstall on December 23, Haase and Kautsky resigned.
Thus the intellectual and idealist element of the revolution was
removed from all influence over the conduct of affairs. The result was
to cause in January a fight to a finish between the Real-politikers of
the Government and the Radicals of the Opposition.

Police precautions against the Russian agents, combined with a Press
propaganda against the Spartacists, provoked the latter to action.
They seized the offices of the _Vorwärts_ and other papers most
offensive to them, and used them for publishing their own pamphlets.
They had not apparently planned anything more than a demonstration,
and did not anyhow exploit the success they had seized by surprise.
The Government, however, after some difficulty in concentrating and
supplying sufficient troops, converted the "putsch" into a pitched
battle. Noske regulars with all the machinery of modern war, made
short work of the half-hearted half-armed irregulars of Eichhorn, the
Spartacist Police Commissioner. The revolution was crushed in Berlin
and driven back to the coast ports, whence it came and whither it
could later be pursued. Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, its Berlin
leaders, were arrested and at once brutally murdered by their escort
with the approval and assistance of the officers in charge. This
murder, perfectly well known in Berlin at the time, was only proved by
court-martial four months later, after which the culprits were allowed
to escape abroad.

So the Independents having committed hari-kari and the Spartacists
being hoist with their own petard, middle-class and moderate Germany
heaved a sigh of relief, and hoped that the bogey of Bolshevism was
buried. The elections to the National Assembly were held a few days
later without disturbance, and the German revolution entered its third
and last phase.

The German revolution which began in November--in old German the
"Month of Fogs"--and ended in February--the "Month of Fools"--was
fogged from the beginning and fooled to the end. Its third and last
phase began about the middle of January with the establishing of
provisional government by the moderate Majority Socialists, the
crushing of Spartacus, and the elections. The radical opposition had
tried to delay the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, partly
because it was for the moment discredited by its secession from the
Coalition and its connection with the Communists, and partly because
it recognised that a reaction towards nationalism and conservatism had
already been set up by the attitude of the Allies and would be given
exaggerated expression at the polls. The drift of a weakened and
wearied mass can raise a dictator to "save society"; only the driving
power of a devoted and determined minority can realise a social
revolution. But the Independents had missed their opportunity of
seizing power and securing such foreign support for the revolution as
they had earned by their attitude on the war. Their subsequent policy
of obstruction had as little success as it deserved.

By the middle of February, when the new Government was proclaimed at
Weimar, a communist revolution had been converted into a
constitutionalist reconstruction; and that this corresponded with the
desire of the majority of the people was shown by the election result.
Every man and woman over twenty was entitled to vote, and a high
percentage did so; while the system of proportional representation
employed, whatever its defects, at least gave a fair numerical
representation of the party presentments of public opinion. As in the
English election, nationalism decided the issue in favour of the
party in power. The Independent opposition was discredited by
Bolshevism, the Conservative opposition by Kaiserism. Apart from the
women the Social-Democrats would probably have had an independent
majority; but, as was shown by the Pfalz results in which the women's
voices were kept separate, they were more conservative and clerical
than the men. As it was, the Majority Socialists with 163 out of 423
members were forced into alliance, not with the Independent Socialists
who had only 22 votes, but with the Democratic Liberals who had 75.
And as this relieved them of all responsibility to the revolution
there was no reason why they should not further strengthen their
parliamentary position by taking in the Clerical Centre with its 55
votes as well. And thus Germany got from losing the war a coalition as
strong parliamentarily and as weak politically as that which winning
the war gave to us.

While the revolution was being side-tracked in Parliament, it was
being sandbagged in the Proletariat. A division of Frei-Corps with all
the machinery of modern war, tanks, aeroplanes, etc., was sent against
the north-western coast ports where the revolution had originated and
where Spartacus was pursuing its policy of aggravating the food
difficulty by preventing the sailing of food ships as arranged under
the armistice. Bremen was entered by force, after fighting; and the
other towns opened negotiations. On the eastern frontier a front was
formed against the Poles, who had occupied nearly all Posen province,
and fighting continued until the Allies stopped it. Great efforts were
made to get together some sort of effective force as a basis for
government; and the resultant Frei-Corps, though at this early date
still few and inferior, were already enough to give check to the
"Bolshevist" menace within and without the frontier. Meantime the
whole "soviet" system of councils was practically 'frozen out' and
politically 'snowed under.' The Central Council was got to abdicate in
favour of the Constituent Assembly: the Socialisation Commission to
which execution of the economic revolution had been referred, resigned
_re infecta_: while the Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils were quietly
ignored. A Provisional Constitution was published in which all ideas
of a centralised Socialist republic were abandoned, and the federal
Reich was restored with the substitution of presidents for princes.
Finally the seat of the Assembly was transferred to Weimar,
professedly to steep it in the sedative atmosphere of the old
pre-Prussian "Kultur" of the philosophers and poets, and practically
to withdraw it from the too stimulating atmosphere of Berlin, which
was still an Independent stronghold. Even so might a demoralised and
democratised England placate a victorious and Victorian America by
transferring parliament to the Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon.

All these strong measures were really signs of weakness. Spartacus had
to be put down to please the Allies, the Poles pushed back to please
the nationalists, the Clericals bribed with Government posts to
counteract French bids for their support in separatist intrigues. The
constitution had to conciliate particularist sentiment in Prussia and
the southern principalities because this sentiment prevailed in the
general exhaustion of national and revolutionary forces. The old
driving power of national sentiment, so much abused during the war and
that might still have been called on for a desperate national defence,
was worn out. The new energy of the revolution had been wasted; and
the country, so far as its government was concerned, was back where it
was when the revolution broke out, materially much the worse for its
three months' excursion into revolution. In a word, the spirit of the
new German Government was diplomatic not democratic. The revolution
had come full circle and the Scheidemann Government of April might
have been the Government of Max von Baden of six months before.

Morally, however, it was not the old Germany that had bowed before the
"forty-seven Princes hats." It had brought back with it from the
perilous peaks and bottomless abysses of revolution a wider outlook
and a deeper insight. And if it returned from its adventure only more
weary and wasted it had at least learned to lift up its eyes to the
hills.




CHAPTER II

THE REACTION


Just a quarter of a century ago I arrived in Weimar fresh from Eton,
and as a budding diplomatist was invited to dinner by the Grand Duke.
The ceremony was a credit to the Court of Pumpernickel. Exactly a week
before there came caracoling to the door what might have been one of
Napoleon's marshals, and was one of the Weimar army. For Weimar had
then an army whose business it was to deliver invitations about a foot
square.

Then on the evening itself and just half an hour before dinner,
appeared a Court carriage and pair, in which you drove through the
ancient Barbican of the Castle to a flourish of trumpets. Next came
presentation to Serenissimus, a very big, very grand old gentleman,
who was always urbanely inane except when he was inanely urbane. After
that came presentation to the Grand Duchess, a very little, very grand
old lady, who sat in a glass case. This was said to be on account of
draughts, but she looked so fragile and precious that no maid could
ever have been trusted with dusting her. The only time I ever saw her
taken out of it was for a presentation of Orders of Merit to deserving
domestics--an institution of her own which Royalty might adopt with
advantage in these days when K.C.M.G.'s are commoner than kitchen
maids.

And now arriving in Germany fresh from the Army, I was again invited
to an evening party at the Schloss. But times have changed and the
Schloss has been promoted from the seat of a Grand Duke of a
mediatised and mediæval principality to the seat of government of a
modern and middle-class German Republic.

The guard in the old Barbican no longer proclaimed my arrival on a
trumpet, but presented a very business-like looking bayonet. Inside
the Castle the State apartments were severely bare, as befits
democratic simplicity. And instead of bland and blethering
Serenissimus I was received by Scheidemann blandly, blandishingly
serene. Instead of gold-laced grandees dining off gold plates I find a
job lot of journalists bolting "belegte Brödchen"; and if there were
fewer good things to be eaten there were many more to be heard.
Everything struck me first as completely different and then as
curiously the same as ever. Only the Dresden china Grand Duchess had
no republican reincarnation.

And perhaps some day I shall find a still newer Weimar, the centre of
a twentieth century Germany that will rise from the ashes of the
nineteenth century and the dust of the eighteenth. Not the
picturesque, poetic Weimar of the past, nor the practical, prosaic
Weimar of the present, but a Weimar of wide vistas and broad views, in
which Young Germany will learn to plan the future.

And as I dreamed of this new Weimar, walking back through the moonlit
streets of the picturesque old town I was roused by the rumbling of
field-guns on the march against the revolution. The drivers and
gunners, hidden under their helmets and heavy cloaks, hunched on their
saddles or huddled on the guns, were borne by slowly, silently,
shapeless shifting shadows, passing out from the town where a few
lights still shone, into the dark. The New Germany is not yet.

In the old days, when Weimar was only the German Stratford-on-Avon,
the theatre was the centre of local society. The first thing you did
on arrival was to present yourself and a box of cigars to the old
gentleman in the box-office and get a seat for the season from which
you could survey from a respectful distance the social lights on the
stage and the serene luminaries in the Grand Ducal box.

But nowadays, when the stage of the Weimar Theatre has become the seat
of Government, it is as hard to get a ticket for a session of the
Assembly as it used to be for the Selamlik of Abdul Hamid.
Incidentally, Germany is to-day much more like Turkey than its old,
well-fed-up, well-fitted-out self. Dingy soldiers everywhere, dirt,
decay and deprivation everywhere, listlessness and laissez-faire on
the surface, with unrest and upheaval below.

But once inside the theatre things are not so different from the old
days. The young ladies from the pensions can still "schwärmen" for the
debonnaire premier Scheidemann or the distingué Brockdorff-Rantzau, or
"schauern" at handsome Koenen, the saturnine Tribune of Halle, or at
Merges, the hunchback tailor of Brunswick. But personally I find a
Weimar "Full Session" about as entertaining and enlightening as was
Weimar Grand Opera. A stout elderly gentleman advances to the centre
of the stage and reads steadily and stolidly through a pile of
typewritten recitative. The Independents, who go in for bravura and
even gag a little, are now nearly always away on tour in the
provinces. So the Assembly can continue daily from three to six
digesting a pleasantly conservative Constitution and a pleasingly
liberal lunch. For Weimar is an oasis of peace and plenty in a land
swept by famine and fighting. Yet even the sleepy backwater of
Thuringia has become a whirlpool of revolution, and Weimar was then
ringed in by a region of revolutionary strikes that threatened it from
three sides. One day a scouting party of Spartacists would be arrested
at the station, on another the line to Berlin would be cut by a strike
in some northern town.

The first week of the National Assembly was nominally occupied with
such formal matters as appointing a President, voting the provisional
constitution, pronouncements on foreign policy, and programmes of
legislation. But naturally what most concerned everyone was the novel
and fascinating business of Cabinet-making. The game was played with
great spirit up to the finish, and the night before the final
announcement had to be made the Cabinet was once more reconstructed.

It was hard on Germany that its first-born Cabinet should have been
triplets, a trinity of the three co-eternal and co-equal
parties--radical, neutral, and reactionary. But if the present
political system was to be maintained and given a majority its
Social-Democratic supporters had to be reinforced from the two
parties next to the right, the Democrats and the Centre. For the
Independent Socialists to the left were intransigent and in voting
power insignificant.

So, after a long haggle between the party leaders as to the number and
nature of the posts each party was to have, there followed another
hard fight as to the persons each party should nominate for their
posts.

It would have required a strong Government to reconstitute the German
polity, reconstruct society, restore solvency, and revive economic
vitality, especially after so much of the momentum of the revolution
had been lost. And the men who had come to the top in the old
Reichstag days were not such as to compensate for want of power in the
machine. The new President, Ebert, the saddler of Heidelberg, had
effaced himself during the storm of the revolution and has apparently
been eliminated altogether by his new responsibility.

The Premier, Scheidemann, on the other hand, showed himself to be an
able and active politician who could speak well on any subject and
sing many songs without book. A clever man, but not the compelling
personality to control the dynamic forces of Socialism or to coerce
the static forces of Separatism.

His second in command in the difficult task of making a working
Constitution was Preuss, the Minister of the Interior, a Jew, a
jurist, and an adjuster. A man with great finesse, but little force.
The questions of the constitutional future of Prussia, of the South
German States, of the North-Western Republics, of the Rhine province,
and of German-Austria, treated by adjustment along a line of least
resistance, seemed likely to be interminable in their intricacies. Dr.
Preuss, clever as he was, soon got into a terrible tangle trying to
untie knots that would have been cut by the revolution.

The post third in importance, Foreign Affairs, a non-party
appointment, was retained by Count Brockdorff-Rantzau--no longer "Dr.
Rantzau"--since Counts, as he told the Assembly, can be democratic. He
had both character and capacity, and if he achieved no success either
at Weimar or Versailles he behaved with dignity under most distressing
conditions.

Of the remaining Ministers Landsberg at Justice, a red Jew from the
province of Posen, who was one of the Provisional Government and
previously a People's Commissary, had a singular and somewhat sinister
reputation. He was held responsible by those who knew for the policy
of breaking with the Poles and with Spartacus.

Bauer at Labour was a trade union politician, a bourgeois turned
bureaucrat. He is now Premier in the Government that signed the peace.

Noske at Home Defence (not "War," mark you, Germany has had enough of
war), is the well-known Prussian Minister, the "Saviour of Society,"
the _Bolsheviktonos_.

Wissel at National Economy had a post with possibilities, but nothing
so much became him in it as the leaving of it--when he found nothing
could be done.

These were all Social-Democrats and constituted such driving force as
that Government had. The inner Cabinet consisted of Landsberg, Noske,
and Scheidemann--brain, backbone, and jaw. Heart it had none.

The new Government was, then, a Coalition between pre-revolution
politicians, and its programme had to be a compromise between
pre-revolution policies. It was only a Government to tide over a
crisis and give the country time to recover itself. But it was at
least composed of experienced parliamentarians who kept up appearances
and did their best to reconstruct with pen and ink the State that
Bismarck had wrought with blood and iron.

The debate that followed the announcement of the new Government showed
clearly enough that the three parties of which the Government was
composed, though they parliamentarily formed a bloc and socially
represented the Burgerstand, yet politically had a different basis and
a divergent bias. Red, white, and black make a very effective national
colour, but whether red Socialism, a colourless Liberalism, and black
Clericalism can make up an effective Cabinet seemed more than dubious.

Scheidemann, as Premier, opened the debate with a fighting speech for
Social-Democracy. He threw the responsibility for the misfortunes
abroad on the Right, the responsibility for misunderstandings at home
on the Left, and proclaimed that the Government would work
methodically at realising the results of the revolution.

He was followed for the Centrum by the venerable Gröber, who preached
a sermon to the effect that all Power was from on High, that the
revolution came very much from below, and consequently the only things
left of any importance were State rights, rights of property, and the
Church of Rome.

Thereafter came Dr. Naumann, for the Democrats, with an eloquent
funeral oration, in which he buried the monarchy, wept over the lost
colonies and provinces, and prayed that all of Germany that was left
might live in unity.

Here we have the three points of view--the Radical reconstructionist,
the Clerical reactionary, and the Liberal rhetorical--red, black, and
white.

And the Government's programme presented the same parti-coloured
patchwork. In foreign policy: an early peace on Wilsonian principles,
restoration of the colonies and prisoners, equal participation in a
League of Nations with mutual disarmament, compulsory arbitration and
no secret diplomacy. In internal policy: democratic administration,
ditto education and army, economic reconstruction, rationing, public
control of monopolies, especially mines and power, right of
association and wage boards, public health, rights for civil servants,
agricultural development and settlement preferably on reclaimed land,
taxation of war profits, income-tax, death duties graduated but not
confiscatory, freedom of conscience, freedom of the Press, freedom of
meeting--all sorts of freedom.

Obviously, there was nothing very red or revolutionary there, or
rather the red was so cautiously peppered into the black and white
that the net result was a colourless Liberalism. It was perhaps no
less symbolic that the Assembly substituted the black, red and yellow
of the Frankfort Liberalism of '48 as the new national colours. German
Liberalism has always had a yellow streak in it.

The failure of Weimar is the failure of German Liberalism. German
Liberalism always has failed Germany, and to this may be attributed the
periodic catastrophes of Germany and the calamities they have brought
upon Europe. German Liberalism fell an easy prey to French Imperialism
in the Napoleonic epoch and to Prussian Imperialism in the Bismarckian
epoch; and the one result of German Liberal movements has hitherto been
to drive abroad the flower of the German "intelligentsia." The
descendants of the "forty-niners" in England and America have been as
valuable an element as were the Huguenots of France or the Flemings from
the Netherlands, and they have joined heartily with us in overthrowing
the despotism that exiled them. But if they had been a bit tougher and
had fought their own fight out a half century ago they would have saved
Europe and Germany the last five years. And the process is repeating
itself. Weimar has failed, so far, more miserably than did Frankfort a
half century ago. The failure of Frankfort was the failure of political
inexperience--that of Weimar has been the failure of political
impotence. Frankfort was over-confident in this power of popular
idealism. It thought a revolution for right and reason could be made by
righteousness and reasoning. Weimar was too cynical to think that the
ideals of the November revolution could ever be a power at all in the
Europe of the Paris Conference and of the Russian campaigns. Frankfort
failed because its Liberalism was too young. Weimar is failing because
its Liberalism is too old.

German Liberalism and its institution parliamentary party government
failed in the first place because they could not come to power before
their day was already past. In the second place they failed because
when their ideals did get realised they did so without opposition and
consequently on too theoretic lines. The German system of proportional
representation for example is the most accurately and equitably
representative of all electoral systems. But it did not provide the
one thing Germany wanted, a powerful and popular Government, and it
did a fatal injury to Germany by helping to split the Socialist party.
Thirdly German Liberals failed because their leaders were men grown
middle-aged and muddle-headed in hopeless opposition. They had
consequently neither the energy nor the experience for popular
leadership. And fourthly they failed because the peculiar combination
of nationalism and internationalism that constitutes Liberalism was
deprived of all prestige with the German people by the policy followed
at Paris. This policy made it almost impossible for a German to hold
any middle position between extreme nationalism and extreme
internationalism. Weimar lost its best chance of acceptance when the
German parliamentary State was excluded from the League of Nations.

And yet Weimar and German Liberalism had everything in its favour in
the autumn of 1918. The reactionary factors that had so little
difficulty in stultifying the Liberalism of Bethmann-Hollweg, von
Kühlmann, and their predecessors were cancelled for the time being.
Parliamentary government on the party system, the form of government
developed by Liberalism on the English model, never having had a trial
in Germany was accepted by nearly all political minds as the panacea.
The minority of extremists who already advocated Council Government on
the Russian model as the only political system that could realise the
revolution had not as yet converted any large body of workmen. The
Trades Unions held the workmen to the parliamentary system, and only
some of the soldiers and most of the sailors were really
revolutionary. The idea that the Soldiers' and Workmen's Councils
could be anything more than a mere improvisation for destruction and
could have any constructive, still more constitutional, function never
entered the heads of any political thinker. Even Liebknecht joined the
Coalition Provisional Government and only withdrew on second thoughts
that were probably those of the much more far-sighted Rosa Luxemburg.
The surrender of their authority by the Peoples' Commissaries to the
Constituent Assembly in December was received without criticism, and
the subsequent similar surrender by the Central Council passed almost
without comment. Germany was to have the most liberal of constitutions
and that was to be enough for the realisation of the German revolution
and for the reconciliation of the enemies of Germany. It was only as
the weeks and months passed and it became evident that German
Liberalism, whether expressed in the diplomatic ideals or the
democratic institutions of Weimar, was doing nothing either for the
revolution or the reconciliation, that the German workmen began to
pass over to the revolutionaries. Then, before very long, this
political process expressed itself in local strikes and street
fighting. The centre of political disturbance and development moved
away from the theatre at Weimar to the streets of Berlin and of the
industrial towns.

No doubt it was good policy in one way to transfer the Constituent
Assembly to Weimar. An Assembly whose vitality is that of an elderly
politician after a contested election and whose voice is that of a
tired lawyer talking in his sleep, could not make itself heard, still
less felt, against the violence, and volleyings of modern Berlin.
Whether its work will be worth much must depend on how slow things
move. They could easily move too fast for the pace of the Assembly.
But at least as Dr. Preuss said to me of his Constitution--"it will
not get in the way of anything better." One thing was certain, that
the Assembly rested for its sanction, even for its survival, on the
Government, not the Government on the Assembly.

And listening to a deputy in the Tribune reading a treatise on
Constitutional niceties as to federation and free-state-rights, I
think of the previous afternoon, when I was listening to a street
orator in Halle shouting very nasty and unconstitutional tirades about
food and freedom to an armed party of soldiers and workmen about to
attack the Government troops. And then, again, I think of an afternoon
in the Weimar Theatre a quarter of a century ago. A prominent member
of the stock company of these days was an old horse blind of one
eye--who was always led on with his blind side to the footlights. On
this occasion he got turned round, and realised for the first time
what a fool they'd made of him for years--and the rest was chaos and
the curtain.

The Constituent Assembly has determined the Constitutional future of
Germany, but the fate of Germany has not been decided there. The
struggle between revolution and repression has not been fought out
between the stalls and the stage of the Weimar Theatre, but in Berlin
and the other big towns where the Government speaks with minenwerfer
and machine-guns, and the Opposition obstruct with barricades. While
the pressure of general strikes and local street fighting has won a
constitutional recognition for socialising property and for
sanctioning the council system never contemplated by the most
revolutionary Parliamentarians, on the other hand class war has given
reaction the support of the whole country against the working class.

The stagnant stodgy atmosphere of Weimar was very different from the
starved and struggling air of Berlin. Though at first sight Berlin did
not seem any more alive than Weimar. For Berlin to-day is a town of
deserted temples and of dethroned gods. All along Unter den
Linden--from the Temples of Mammon--the great hotels, to the Temple of
Moloch--the imperial palace--everywhere is decay and dilapidation, an
abomination of desolation in every façade and on every face. Mammon
has indeed come off better than Moloch; for the palace and public
buildings are shattered with shell and starred with shots and the
balcony where the War-Lord appeared to his worshippers has a hole in
the middle. Whereas the shrines of Mammon are full of worshippers from
all quarters of the world. The hotel lobbies are crowded with
vulture-like profiles brooding over the carcase of German economic
enterprise.

Yet Berlin, though dirty and dilapidated, is by no means dead but the
centre of the conflict between two faiths--two religions. For the
revolution has ended the foreign war only to begin a civil war between
nationalists and internationalists. On the one side, the Old Believers
in the Orthodox Faith of nationalism, founded on wars of liberation,
fomented by generations of political propaganda and excited to
fanaticism by a war against the world. On the other side the new
Dissenters of the revolution preaching internationalism and a Commune
of Heaven in which only the poor shall have a place. In December
internationalism was dominant in Berlin; nationalism was developing
under pressures from Paris; while imperialism was dormant. For at this
time in Paris the internationalism of Wilsonian principles was still
counterbalancing imperialist and nationalist policies of the Allies.
It was curious to note as the issues at Paris were decided one by one
against internationalism how nationalism ousted internationalism from
control of policy in Germany. By the time the Treaty of Versailles was
published the old orthodox factor was again firmly established and the
dissenters--the revolutionary internationalists--had been driven into
the wilderness.

Any Sunday morning in Berlin during the sessions of the Paris
Conference would probably have given more than one opportunity of
observing the revival of the only real religion existing in modern
capital cities--nationalism. On one Sunday I have in mind there were
several protest meetings against the proposals reported from Paris for
partitioning off German populations in the Saar district, West
Prussia, Danzig, German Bohemia, and the Tyrol, and for preventing the
union of German-Austria. For instance, you might have gone to the
Sport-Palast with Erzberger in the pulpit. I myself did not. The
rotund, rubicund, ebullient, emollient Erzberger, ex-Minister of
Propaganda and delegate to Spa, who looks like Winston Churchill
turned Papal Legate, was too ritualistic for me. I went to a "service"
at the Circus Busch, where the sermon was broader.

Come with me then along Unter den Linden past the gilt crosses and
cupolas of the Evangelical Dom and the shell-shattered sham classic
façade of the Imperial Palace--deserted shrines of the faith--to a
very dilapidated and dingy circus. There was a time when the
Protestants of Germany were driven into the depths of the woods and
the dens of wild beasts to hold their services. And to-day we find the
pastors of protestant nationalism symbolically perched on pasteboard
rocks amid woodland scenery, with a very realistic atmosphere of
menagerie. The congregation is characteristically middle-class and by
no means so formidable in appearance as the hungry, haggard workmen
and their women that we should have found in a meeting of the
dissenting internationalists.

       *       *       *       *       *

As we come in Freiherr von Richthofen is perorating a sort of
commination service, each verse of which is received with a loud
response. The Paris Conference is worse than the Congress of Vienna
(ah). France is outraging and robbing Germany when wounded and a
prisoner (aah). But not a yard of German soil shall be surrendered
without consent of its population (aaah). Germany can be dissected
alive, but England will be disgraced and America dishonoured (aaah),
and a time will come when such outrages will find their retribution
(AAAH). A roar of applause which rouses the wild beasts in their dens,
so that they roar in unison. The Paris diplomats have at last
succeeded in stirring up again the weary wolves of war where they were
lying licking their wounds.

But then, like a thin trickle of cold water into a boiling pot, comes
the aged, anxious voice of the patriarchal Bernstein. He begins by
reading the resolution of the Berne Conference; but we are here to
attack the Paris Conference, and get restless, shouting "Zur Sache"
(come to the point). He speaks of the fair-mindedness of the British
delegates there, trade unionists as well as independents, and
concludes that England as a people wishes to be fair to Germany; this
can even be seen in developments at Paris. But we don't share this
optimism--_Blödsinn_ (bosh), is about the mildest of our
interjections. Still Bernstein, nothing daunted, maintains that if
Germans bring facts before the English the English will be fair.
"Quite true," shouts an elderly man near by. "What do you know about
it?" cries a youth some rows away. "I have been longer in England than
you have in the world, _Lausbub_," retorts the man.

Bernstein again becomes audible, talking about Alsace-Lorraine. Once
we might have appealed to foreign fairness there, too, he says, but
now it is too late. Alsace-Lorraine is lost, and we lost it. This is
too much for us, and we shout: "But you're speaking for partition.
_Quatsch!_ (bosh). _Parteibulle!_ (party claptrap), etc." Bernstein
dominates the storm enough to shout: "You have been so long fed on
lies you can't swallow the truth." But we are not here to have truth
shoved down our throats.

Eduard Bernstein withdraws--a prophet without honour, he has this week
both left the opposition party and lost his Government post. He is
followed by the representative of German-Austria, the new type of
professor-politician, with a Victorian appearance and a Wilsonian
address--very earnest and emphatic. The union of Germany and
German-Austria is, he maintains, an internal affair and quite
inevitable. We give Professor Hartmann a rousing reception, and file
out into the cold, clear winter weather of Berlin.

Outside is a large black, red, and gold Republican flag, and a number
of enthusiasts carrying placards, "No partitioning of Germany," "No
peace of violence," and so forth. A long procession forms and moves
off. Look at that group, mostly elderly men and women of the middle
class, thin and threadbare with the look given by hardship and hunger
that once in Germany one saw only in paintings of the Middle
Ages--dull faces, but not without devotional fervour. So they shuffle
along round a placard inscribed "Wilson's Fourteen Points," as their
ancestors once shuffled in procession for Luther's theses. Unhappily
Wilson did not succeed in nailing his theses to the portals of the
Quai d'Orsay.

We reach the Wilhelmstrasse, where we join the processions from the
other meetings. All learn with gratification that the Sport-Palast has
hooted Erzberger because he won't declare for a restoration of Posen
to Germany, and that the officers' meeting passed a resolution calling
for the exclusion from the peace delegation of the internationalist
Professor Schücking. The procession from the officers' meeting is
headed by a band playing "Deutschland über alles," and by the old
black, white, and red national flag, which is fast becoming the
standard of reaction. After the Finance Minister, Schiffer, has
welcomed our quite unobjectionable resolution from a balcony of the
Reichskanzlei, a young officer suddenly appears in another balcony
waving a black, white, and red flag, and adjuring us to swear loyalty
to it. We are prepared to swear anything by now without much bothering
what it is, and find ourselves being moved along towards the
Tiergarten.

As we pass the British Embassy suddenly the officers' procession
begins to shout and wave to a flabby-faced portly person bowing and
smiling on the kerb. Ludendorff! By the undying jingo! Well! what
next? Then to Bismarck's statue, where officers offer tributes of
rhetoric and wreaths, and finally a schoolboy, climbing the pedestal,
calls for cheers for the Kaiser, while a claque below start up "Heil
Dir im Siegerkranz." But this is a bit too much for the bystanders.
"Where's your Kaiser? Where's your Victory?" shouts one. "You give us
the Kaiser," growls a soldier behind me, "and we'll give him a wreath
all right--round his neck, and pulled tight."

The German dynasties exploited Luther and his Protestant movement. I
doubt they will succeed in exploiting the national protestants of
Germany, who are revolting against the infallible imbecilities of
diplomacy. But undoubtedly our demagogues and diplomatists have
succeeded in setting up again the idols our soldiers and sailors had
overthrown.

The scene described above took place in March and then it was already
becoming difficult to see the other side of Berlin political life--the
internationalist and revolutionary. Reaction had begun to drive
revolution underground and revolution was resisting spasmodically in
eruptions and explosions. Let us take another day in March, one during
the street fighting, to see what this other side of life in Berlin was
like.

Before the war the life that filled the public places of Berlin was as
vivid and vivacious as it was vulgar and vicious. Unter den Linden was
like a scene in a second-rate revue; the company in one of the rococo
restaurants was like the food, exuberant and cheap, but neither
interesting nor choice. Nowhere were nouveaux riches so obviously new
and so obtrusively rich. Everything was bright and loud, everyone
looked overfed and over-dressed. Materially there was a sort of
red-faced, raucous-voiced rotundity about Berlin. Morally it was in a
decadence like that of the Second Empire at Paris when a charlatan
despot and a cheap-jack Government were trying to dazzle the eyes and
distract the ears of a half-deluded public.

But now, after four years' war, Berlin is like an Empire Exhibition
that has been deserted and decaying through the storms of four
winters. The stucco ornaments have fallen, the gilding is long gone,
and the whole structure is rotting away.

Indeed, the first impression you get is that both city and people are
dying of a decline. The people, like their houses, are dirty and
dingy; everywhere crippled beggars and ruined or unroofed buildings
show the direct effects of war. Clothes are threadbare, faces thin.
Stalwart, straight-backed Americans, warmly clothed and well fed,
stand out like solid shapes among shadows. As they stride through the
streets you expect to see them pass through these grey, drifting
figures as through ghosts.

Yet there is life still in Berlin, for men must be alive who can face
death for a cause, whether it be for law or for liberty. But you must
go further afield to find it than Unter den Linden where are haunting
only ghosts of the past. We are hunting the genius of the future.

We shall be out all day on this hunt, and had better breakfast on
bully beef and biscuit--a present from American friends--for black
bread and substitutes are no foundation for a long walk; and of the
vast transportation system of underground and overhead trains,
electric trams, motor-buses, and taxis that used to carry over three
million passengers daily, little indeed is now left. Moreover the
wretched remains are to-day tied up by the general strike and street
fighting. And so, avoiding the streets where sniping is in progress or
barb-wire barricades threaten a search for arms and inspection for
passes, we come to the General Assembly of Berlin Councils--that for
the moment alone retains political control of the situation, since the
Government took military command of it by the severest form of martial
law and the general use of machine-guns.

Here we find a large music hall which before the war was a typical
scene of flamboyant Berlin night-life. On this grey winter's morning
it is crammed full of grimly earnest men--the delegates. On the stage
is the Executive Council. The chairman the Independent, Richard
Müller, is of the pastor or professor type--his colleague Däumig a
heavily built, grey-haired man, might be an English engineer or
merchant captain. On the left of the hall are the Communists, in the
middle the Independents, and on the right the Social-Democrats, with a
little knot of Democrats--the two latter parties supporters of the
Government and opposers of the strike--but in a minority here. The
business before the Assembly is the filling of the vacancies on the
Executive Council left by the Communists who seceded from it when it
declared the strike off, and the appointing of delegates to the
National Congress of Councils which is to meet next month. But the
Communists intend to force a discussion of the Government's policy as
to the street fighting which is still going on at Lichtenberg, and the
chairman has to concede this.

First come forward representatives of the Councils' Commissions
delegated to investigate the stories of cruelties by the insurgents
and to negotiate a cessation of hostilities between them and the
government commanders. They give their reports in impartial and
unimpassioned language, but indicate their impression that the
military authorities they had to deal with were less concerned to
restore order with as little loss of life and of time as possible,
than to create the impression that the disorder was worse than it
really was. They were exploiting a local "putsch" so as to carry out a
general "pogrom."

The first speaker, Richard Müller, for the Independents, deplores the
disorder, but denounces the Government for instructing its troops to
shoot everyone found with arms, in reprisal for atrocities invented by
its own secret service. The defence of the Government is undertaken
by a Social-Democrat, who declares the Independents responsible for
the disorders, amid stormy interruptions from the Communists. The
chairman can hardly get him a hearing, and he leaves the stage,
indignantly threatening that his party will secede unless it is better
treated.

Next dashes on to the stage the Communist leader, who delivers an
effective indictment of the Government's proceedings--at first
interrupted by angry interjections from the Right. But as he develops
the tragedy of what is going on outside, gives one name after another
of comrades shot on no more than suspicion and describes the ring of
howitzers firing into the crowded tenements of Lichtenberg, a silence
falls over the meeting, and at last expressions of disapproval and
dissociation come from supporters of the Government. For here is an
Assembly that is alive enough, and though organised in parties, yet
still open to the appeal of facts and to the force of arguments.

But suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, the speaker stops, leaps
from the desk, and dashes off the stage at the back--while a confused
uproar breaks out at the back of the hall, dominated by sharp military
orders. The whole Assembly comes to its feet and faces about. The Left
shout and shake fists at a row of steel-helmeted soldiers, with
loaded rifles at the ready and a minatory machine-gun. The Right wave
hands and shrug shoulders to assure the Left they are not accomplices.
The platform proclaims that the proceedings will continue. A Democrat
is put up to speak, but even his mind, conscious of right, and his
courageous determination to express equal disapproval with the Left as
to the entry of the troops are not enough to overcome the mesmerism of
that machine-gun. The Assembly for the moment is reunited, but its
vitality is gone.

We have been present at the first scene of the forcible suppression of
the Councils movement in its constitutional centre--a suppression that
has since become continuous.

The next covert we have to draw in our hunt is a club of intellectuals,
mostly Independents, meeting weekly at a private house. Berlin never had
a club life, and this is only an embryo of a political club before it
emerges from a social gathering. The members sit round in a great ring,
sometimes all joining in a general debate, sometimes breaking up into
small discussions. They are of all types and tendencies. The well-bred,
well-dressed man with a Balliol manner is a Rhodes Scholar and a
successful diplomatist of ultra-radical views--for such an anomaly is
possible under Count Brockdorff-Rantzau. The soldier in faded field grey
describing a scheme for educating workman members of Councils in their
duties, is a Communist. The diplomat is maintaining that Germany should
join the League of Nations, even if it and the peace conditions are
unsatisfactory. The worse the material position of Germany the better
its moral position for taking the lead in a revision of the peace and of
the League. The Communist brushes this aside as sophistry. How can you
found internationalism on national Governments or even on national
Parliaments? Wilsonism and Weimarism are both out of date and off the
mark. An international Soviet of washerwomen would be of more real value
and vitality. He is interrupted by cheers greeting the arrival of a
famous fighting flying man, who was believed to have been one of the
twelve hundred arrests of opposition leaders. An early Victorian
middle-aged man in side whiskers and a frock coat, an ex-Minister in
touch with the Government, begins to explain the necessity of
reconstructing the Cabinet by eliminating the men most compromised by
the loss of life, and including new men from the Left. He considers that
while opinion is moving to the Left the Government is moving to the
Right, and that as the breach widens the outbreaks will get worse. He
fears, however, that men who have grown old in opposition and have only
just tasted power will not be torn away from it and will find it simple
to govern by machine-guns. But the young men are not interested in the
Cabinet--they drift off into discussing their schemes for the Councils.

Here, too, is life--the life radiated by young men who feel that power
is coming to them before youth has gone, the life reflected from
middle-aged men who have broken the dull crust in which circumstance
was encasing them.

When this club was suppressed shortly after, Berlin could ill afford
the loss of vitality. For the absence of all healthy, happy and
youthful faces made it like a world of gnomes and goblins. In the case
of the men this was mainly owing to the war, and in the case of the
women and children to the blockade. Over a million of the fittest men
had been killed, and the result was a survival of all the unfit; while
the food and fuel hardships had fallen heaviest on the women and
children of the towns.

But there was another reason for the disappearance of all young men
that had youth and manliness. Their warfare was not yet accomplished,
and they had only come back from fighting the whole world on three
fronts for four years to fight against each other in the streets of
their capital cities. They went to war against the world for two
ideals--patriotism and progress; and now these two ideals had
themselves collided in civil war.

Of the two German ideals, that of patriotism is the one we know best.
That dull devotion and forced fervour that fights in massed formations
to sentimental songs. It is a form of patriotism that does not appeal
to us. To Athens Sparta is anti-pathetic. But there were fine fellows
among the Spartans as well as tyrants and helots, and now that the
tyrants are gone such as are left of the fine fellows have a chance of
realising their Spartan ideals. Now that those trumpery tinsel
tyrants, the Kaiser and his courtier generals, have retired to
scribble and squabble and scuffle over dirty linen--a Valhalla of
washerwomen--the men of the real Spartan breed, who carried the German
arms from conquest to conquest until the catastrophe was complete, are
working hard to restore ideals shattered by rout and revolution.

Of the real fine fellows that I've met in Germany half were officers
and men who had responded to the various appeals for home defence and
who were working to revive the old Spartan tradition in the
war-wearied youth.

Here are two notices from the advertisement columns of the _Lokal
Anzeiger_, which seem to me to contrast the real Spartan and the
Junker:

"To all old soldiers of the Prince Moritz of Anhalt-Dessau Fifth
Pomeranian Infantry Regt., No. 42. Regimental Comrades! From day to
day the impudence of the Poles increases. From day to day they seize
more German land and more German food. From day to day they come
nearer to--they claim more of--our Old Pomerania. All you brave old
42nd who ever undefeated have defended German soil against more
formidable foes, rejoin your beloved regiment to defend your homes
against the ungrateful Poles to liberate whom so many of your comrades
died. Report to Headquarters, Stralsund. Conditions of service are
pay, allowances, etc., as on active service with 5 mks. extra daily,
and a fortnight's notice. Obedience required to military regulations
and to those in authority, with whom are associated councils of
delegates. Signed F----, member of Soldiers' Council, First Lieut.
K----Regimental Commandant."

Note the signature of the representative of the Soldaten-Rat preceding
that of the Commandant.

In those days even Frei-Corps recruited in this manner had their
Soldiers' Councils. And it was the remains of this Council
organisation that prevented these Corps from being used to overthrow
the Republic in the _coup-d'état_ planned when the treaty was signed.

Compare now the appeal of the Junker--a _Vortanzer_ no doubt at many a
Court Ball and a flunkey still.

"Officer of elegant appearance and engaging manners with experience of
polite society, seeks employment. Would undertake to supervise
restaurant."

Moreover, as a result of class war, the students, hitherto always the
Young Guard of revolution in Germany, have this time taken sides with
what may well be called reaction. In the various volunteer corps--the
"Noske Guards"--that are used for fighting the revolutionary troops
and the workmen, the largest and best elements are young ex-officers
or N.C.O.'s and students.

I remember when a workmen's meeting was broken up by a picket of the
Reinhard Corps noting that the privates almost all wore pince-nez. The
workmen called them mercenaries and murderers, but it was absurd to
accuse fine young men who looked like Balliol, with a leaven of Blues
and Bloods, of selling themselves for eight shillings a day and extra
rations. These Spartans and their ideals will be heard of again
unless Germany is given a square deal and a fair field.

And the other half of the fine fellows I've met in Germany were
Spartacists--fighters for the ideal of progress. For this ideal has
had in Germany as many devotees as the other. No country had so large
a radical and revolutionary political element as Germany before the
war. In no country did the economics and politics of Socialism occupy
so many minds. Sovietism is only a rough Russian realisation of German
ideals. The rebellion under Spartacus of revolted gladiators and
escaped slaves, which challenged for years the imperialism and
militarism of Rome, does give some idea of what these men are and what
their cause is.

The handsomest and most intelligent man I've met in Germany was a
Spartacist, a film actor by profession. The last time I saw him--with
a rifle slung over his shoulder and stick bombs in his belt--he
explained what he was fighting for. German militarism, he said, had
revived, encouraged by the Entente attitude; the present Government
was as much in the hands of reactionary officers as any during the
war. The war had crippled militarism, but only real revolution, the
council system, could kill it. He was glad he had escaped the war, so
as to have a life to offer to the right side. The next day he was
taken and shot.

Now, I do not intend to convey that the Germany of to-day is a
fighting country. It is quite the reverse. But a section of idealists
at each extreme has decided that they are bound to die for their
ideals as Spartans or Spartacists. That they will die in vain is
inevitable. If only because there is no Sparta and no Spartacus. There
is no German land where such an ideal as that of the reactionary
"Spartans" can now be realised, not even in rural Prussia; and there
is no Spartacus to command and control the "Spartakists" of Germany.
But there is another reason also--that there are too few young Germans
left.

On a Sunday morning I went to the Academy of Singing to hear old
German music. One number on the programme, "A Scottish Ballad of a
Lost Battle," proved to be a translation of Lady Lindsay's "Lament
After Flodden." Sung to a plaintive eighteenth century air, with the
thin far-away accompaniment of lute and spinet, it was like an echo
from the lost battles and lost beauty of all time. With bowed heads
and tear-filled eyes, men and women sat silent long after the last
heartrending refrain had died away.

In the afternoon I went out to the "Greenwood" of Berlin, a district
of pine woods, hills, and lakes, where the young people of Berlin used
to flock for picnics and water-parties. The Berliners are noisy in
their enjoyments, and on Sunday afternoons before the war the woods of
the Havelland would ring with shouting and singing and laughter, with
feasting and flirting, as though Pan himself held festival.

To-day a few girls were there wandering sadly through the silent
woods, pale ghosts of dead delights, and there was no sound but the
sighing of the pines--

    "Sair moaning in ilka green loaning,
    The flowers o' the forest are a' wede awa'."




CHAPTER III

THE COUNCIL REPUBLICS


The first result of the failure of German Liberalism and of the Weimar
Assembly was that revolution and reaction came into active collision
with each other in the provincial capitals.

These two conflicts ran concurrently, and collision in the provinces
was a necessary consequence of collision in the capital. Moreover,
when the revolution had failed twice to assert itself by force in
Berlin, it stood little chance of surviving in Bavaria, Brunswick, or
Bremen. Such spontaneous and sporadic appeals to force met by
organised police measures and prosecutions only prevented the
Socialist party from reuniting, and forced German politics into a duel
between the propertied classes and the proletariat, in which the
latter had no prospect of success.

This duel started in Berlin in the December and January conflicts
which were settled in favour of the Government, and its subsequent
continuance in the provinces had the same result.

The outbreaks in the coast ports and the coal districts of Westphalia
were remote, and their unexpectedly easy repression by flying columns
only confirmed the Government in a policy of coercion. The outbreaks
in Munich and the south were outside the political orbit in which the
Government was moving. If the spread of the general strike from the
west to Saxony, which broke Germany in two and cut Berlin off from
Weimar, was more serious, yet the Maerker column soon succeeded, in
removing any danger to Weimar and in reopening communications with
Berlin. These outbreaks were not formidable enough to force the
Government to depart from its policy of suppressing not only revolts,
but the revolution.

But the general strike and street fighting in Eastern Berlin during
March although it was intentionally exaggerated so as to impress Paris
with the Bolshevist danger, did for a few days imperil not only the
Scheidemann Government, but the whole Parliamentary system. Both were
consequences of the coalition which by giving the Government a class
basis had made it quite incapable of going halfway to meet the
revolutionary demands for recognition of the Council System and for
socialisation. At first, party ties had held the moderate mass of the
Social-Democratic workmen; but as time passed and the middle-class
mentality of the men in power became more and more marked,
dissatisfaction with the Government and defections to the Opposition
grew rapidly. Even _Vorwärts_ admitted there was cause of complaint.

In vain did the Government poster the streets with pathetic protests
that "socialisation is already here," and issued manifestoes pointing
to its legislative achievements--Eight-Hour Day, Unemployment Benefit,
Land Settlement, what we should call "Whitley Councils" in coal-mining
districts, War Pensions, and Repeal of War Measures. These had already
been put in force provisionally by the previous Government, and did
not amount to much any way. In vain did the Government profess its
intention of pushing through the two Bills approving, in principle,
nationalisation of coal mines and potash deposits; for no one wanted
nationalisation except as a step to socialisation. The workmen felt
that the Government was, as one put it to me, "a revolution
profiteer." It had perverted the purposes and pocketed the profits of
the revolution. They felt that Weimar, as another one expressed it,
was only a "soviet of profiteers" and would produce no socialist
legislation.

The revolutionary opponents of the Coalition saw their opportunity,
but their leaders could secure no combination or concerted action.
Nothing, indeed, was more surprising than the incapacity of the
Germans to associate and organise for a political purpose.

The general impression one got was that Germany had so grown to look
on political responsibility as the function of a specialised class
that they never could consider anyone outside that class as capable of
replacing any member of it. We see something of the same sort of
helplessness growing up in England, where it is becoming increasingly
difficult for the man in the street to conceive a Cabinet formed from
outside a small clique of the ruling class. And the German
revolutionaries of the Opposition showed themselves as incapable of
making use of their opportunities as did their Liberal opponents in
the Government. The game was in the revolutionaries' hands in the
early months of the year if they could have combined. But the
different disturbed districts declared war on the Government at just
such intervals of time as allowed them to be conveniently beaten in
detail by very small forces. Each district again was divided into all
manner of dissentient organisations in different stages of
development. In some the Councils were really representative, in
others they had co-opted themselves; while there were as many kinds of
revolutionary corps as of Councils.

In Berlin alone there were some ten different corps. A leader of one
of the last insurgent parties to hold out, told me, during an attack
by the Government troops, that it was not the great disparity of
numbers and munitions that had defeated him, but the difficulty of
getting the revolutionaries to work together.

Moreover, the issue between reaction and revolution in Berlin was
fought out in two different and quite distinct conflicts, that were
invariably confused by the foreign Press. One took the form of strikes
the other of street fighting. The general strike was the resistance of
the Workmen's Council organisations to suppression by the middle-class
Ministry. The street fighting was the resistance of the remains of the
old revolutionary forces to suppression by the new Frei-Corps
"mercenaries" of the reaction. The two developed concurrently though
with little connection.

The strikes that were always breaking out everywhere for no apparent
reason culminated in the Berlin general strike of March. This general
strike was forced on the reluctant Majority Socialists by the
Independents, themselves propelled by the Communists. For these two
latter controlled the Executive Committee of the Berlin Councils. But
though the Majority Socialists did not oppose the general strike, they
did their best to make it a failure, and when, after three days, the
Communists pressed for its extension to water, gas, electricity, and
food supply in order to support the fighting Spartacists, the
Majoritarians withdrew, and by the end of the week the strike was
declared off. The Majority Socialists' proposal for unconditional
surrender was rejected, that of the Independents for surrender on
conditions of amnesty accepted, and the conditions were agreed to by
the Government. Thereupon the Left of the Communists, including the
brilliant Clara Zetkin, took the opportunity of this crisis and of the
party caucus (Parteitag) then sitting in Berlin to secede to the
Spartacists.

The loss of their Left wing was, however, more than compensated to the
Independents by the movement leftward in the ranks of the
Social-Democrats, the supporters of the Government. And this leftward
trend was accentuated by disapproval of the action of the Government
in bombarding whole quarters of Berlin and in shooting wholesale its
political opponents. This rapid response of the Council system to a
trend in public opinion was in strong contrast to the irresponsive
inertia of the Weimar Assembly, which remained representative only of
a nationalist mood, and remote from the whole Socialist movement.

The Ministry had to give to the political pressure. Already before the
strike it indicated concessions as to industrial socialisation and
constitutional sanction of the Councils, and these were elaborated and
established by negotiations at Weimar with missions sent from the
Central and Executive Councils. These concessions were in principle
very considerable, and much more than could ever have been imposed in
practical application on the Centrum supporters of the Government. The
result of this crisis was therefore to prepare the way for a
reconstruction of the Government on a moderate Socialist basis,
between a Centrum-Conservative opposition to the Right and a Communist
to the Left. This would have represented the true balance of political
power at the time; and the fact that it would not have had a majority
at Weimar would have been only a formal difficulty.

But this, the natural, solution was made impossible by the
extraordinary severity with which the armed resistance to the
Government was punished. For this severity made it impossible for
even the most moderate Independents to join the Government. And this
fighting was not a development of the strike, but of the campaign
carried on by the Government with volunteer flying columns against the
revolutionary corps throughout Germany.

Of these corps, of which there were many in Berlin, the most important
were the Republican Guard and the Marine Division. The former had from
the first supported the Government, while the Marine Division of Kiel
sailors had already been in collision with it in December. The other
corps were all more or less in opposition, and some were mere
camouflage for bad characters. Until these corps were dispersed the
constitutional Government had no complete control of Berlin apart from
their "Council" rival, the Executive Committee. A first step was made
towards their suppression by the arrest of sixty ringleaders;
whereupon the Marine Division and the other corps prepared for
resistance, with the assistance of the Spartacist irregulars and a
rabble of roughs and rascals. These were joined later by about half
the Republican Guard, which had come into collision with the
Frei-Corps--the Government volunteer contingents. The strikers,
however, took no part in the fighting.

The strike was declared on a Monday; Tuesday passed in preparations by
the regulars and plunderings by the rabble, and on Wednesday the
garrisons of Government buildings in the east central district of
Berlin were attacked and besieged. They were hard pressed, but held
out, being supplied by aeroplane until relieved by an offensive of the
Government's troops on Thursday afternoon. For some hours a tremendous
bombardment was carried on round the Alexanderplatz and neighbouring
streets, but the damage to property though considerable could only
have been as little as it was if at least half the "hows" and
"minnies" had been firing blank; for the benefit rather of the
correspondents than of the insurgents. The insurgents' positions were
eventually made untenable by aeroplane observation and bombing. During
the following days they were driven, with terrific fusillades and some
fighting, through the east end into the suburbs, where the
bombardments were continued for no obvious reason for several days.

Berlin will long remember those Ides of March. So shall I, not because
of Thursday's fighting--you could generally get your fill of such
fighting in Germany those days--but because on that Thursday I got a
real lunch. It was a good lunch--oysters, veal cutlets, and pancakes.
It was given me by a banker, and cost just about four shillings a
mouthful. I know, because I counted them. And in the cellars of the
same house were families living on 5 lbs. of bad potatoes and 5 lbs.
of black bread a week.

The banker and I were enemies, and I was nominally and nationally
engaged in starving him; though, as members of our respective
Independent Labour Parties, we were politically working in the same
cause. And a few streets away men of one race and one class were
killing each other respectively in the names of Law and Liberty. Such
was European civilisation in the year of Our Lord 1919.

But probably you are more interested in the fighting; so, if you like,
I will take you two excursions through it. We will start the first on
Thursday afternoon, when the insurgent soldiers and Spartacists were
trying to force their way westward from their base in the east end,
across the Spree, past the Schloss, to the Linden, and the Government
troops were trying to drive them eastward. The main battleground was
the Alexanderplatz, from which radiate the main thoroughfares leading
east.

At the west end of the Linden all is much as usual. Instead of the
omnibuses laid up by the general strike long German farm carts drawn
by ponies are carrying passengers perched on planks resting on
packing-cases. Lorries with mounted machine-guns patrol up and down,
and machine-gun pickets guard all important buildings. As we go east
the roadway empties and the traffic on the pavements thickens into
hesitating groups all facing eastward, or knots encircling some
political discussion. Further on the roadway is blocked by artillery
of the Lüttwitz Volunteer Corps going into action--field-guns, trench
mortars, and minenwerfer, the latter towed behind lorries loaded with
the missiles, great brown conical cylinders 4 ft. high. Here, too, is
the first cordon, and the game of "passes" begins.

The main rules are not to revoke by playing a pass from the wrong
side, and not to put on a higher card than is necessary. I take this
trick with quite a low card, the Foreign Office pass. At the next
cordon I try quite a good card--a pink Weimar Press pass with a
photograph, but he won't have it. I go one better with a British
passport, Royal Arms and all, but he trumps this by shoving his rifle
under my nose and saying, "Be off!" I have still a special pass from
the Kommandantur, and, best of all, a visiting card with "Noske"
scribbled on it, but the game is over here. These Government
volunteers, boys of eighteen or nineteen, shoot from the hip or
anyhow, and are all on hair triggers.

We try round another way. A soldier with a rifle at the ready comes
down the middle of the empty street scanning the windows. "Window
shut," he shouts, aiming at one. A red poster proclaims that anyone
loitering will be shot at. We are now in the danger zone. A lorry
hurries forward, the bottom spread with brown stained mattresses. The
noise becomes bewildering--the _crack_ of roof snipers and the _rap_
of the machine-guns are incessant. A field-gun is banging away round
the corner, and that heavy boom is a minenwerfer shelling the
Alexanderplatz.

The main struggle has already passed into the roads radiating
eastward, which the insurgents are barricading hastily, while others
on tugs retreat south down the Spree. But of this fight we can only
see the aeroplanes swooping a few hundred feet over the roofs and
bombing the machine-gun nests. An insurgent plane engages for a few
minutes, but retires outnumbered. The battle is over; though fighting
will go on for days as the troops drive the insurgents from one street
to another through the eastern quarter out into the suburbs.

And now it is the following Tuesday, and I will take you for our
second excursion into the insurgent camp at Lichtenberg--the most
easterly suburb of Berlin, where the main body still holds out. This
morning's Government bulletin has told us that the victorious
Government troops have cleared the whole East End, except Lichtenberg,
which is encircled with a "ring of steel." That several thousand
insurgents have barricaded all approaches and are sweeping them with
field-guns. That they have destroyed hundreds of tons of flour. That
they have shot sixty--a hundred--two hundred prisoners. That others
have been torn in pieces by the mob, which has taken wounded from the
ambulances and clubbed them to death. That no one in a decent coat can
venture on the street without being murdered. That in consequence of
these "bestial atrocities" anyone found with arms will be shot. But
we've read war bulletins before!

On our way we pass a convoy of prisoners, hands handcuffed behind
their backs, armed motor-cars before and behind. A young soldier
blazes off several shots to scatter the crowd, at which a well-dressed
woman remonstrates, but she is at once arrested and put with the
convoy.

Here we are at the Warschauer Brücke over the Spree, where there is
an imposing concourse of steel-helmeted troops and guns, and a cordon.
We pass this after being searched for arms, and across the bridge come
on a lot of guns and machine-guns firing fiercely down the Warschauer
Strasse, though there is no audible reply or visible reason. After
watching the shells holing houses, we start working our way round to
the south through empty streets, keeping close to the house-fronts and
taking cover when bullets whisper a warning. At last crowded streets
again, and through them to a broad avenue crossed by shallow trenches
and ramshackle barricades--the much-bulletined Frankfurter Allee. Here
an insurgent picket takes charge of us and undertakes to bring us to
the secret Headquarters.

"But where are your field-guns?" we ask.

"Field-guns? We haven't any," they say, surprised.

"And how do you keep the troops in check?"

"Oh, those boys! Two of us take machine-guns, charge with them down
each side of the street, and they run."

"And how many of you are there?"

"Some two or three hundred perhaps--it varies, but we're all old
soldiers--we allow no boys to fight for us."

"And have you shot the sixty policemen you took in the Lichtenberg
station?"

"Sixty policemen? There aren't that number in all Lichtenberg. Two got
shot defending the station, but after they surrendered to a quarter of
their number we let them all go home. You can go and see any of them."

It is impossible not to believe these intelligent, even intellectual
and eminently honest faces. So the sixty policemen follow the
field-guns and the "ring of steel" into the limbo of "White" lies.

We pass a railway goods yard where plundered flour is being carried
away in sacks.

"Where is that going?" we ask.

"To the bakers, and afterwards to be distributed gratis to the crowd."

We see later women with red crosses distributing loaves from a cart to
women and children. We reach our destination, only to be warned by a
woman just in time that it is now occupied by troops--a narrow escape
that so shakes the nerve of our guide that he takes refuge in a
dressing station improvised in a shop. Here are "neutral" doctors and
nurses, very angry at the bombardment of crowded tenement houses and
the reckless shooting by the young volunteers. They run great risks,
as robbers have so often misused the Red Cross that it is now no
protection against the Government troops. Here are many wounded,
mostly women and children, and but a few fighters. The latter all
indignantly deny having shot prisoners, though they know the other
side are doing it. And then at last to the evasive Headquarters, where
the leaders tell us of what they hope to achieve by this desperate
resistance of a few hundred men armed with rifles and bombs against as
many thousands armed with all the machinery of modern war.

"Noske," they say, "is only a puppet in the hands of Majors Gilsa and
Hammerstein, and they are agents of the Eden Hotel, the headquarters
of the Cavalry Guard and the centre of reaction. The old story again
of Bethmann-Hollweg, Ludendorff, and the General Staff, militarism and
monarchism is what all this bombardment means, for they want to
convince the Entente that they must have a large standing Army. They
have just raised the pay and doubled the rations of these young
mercenaries. Why don't the Entente abolish them and insist on a Swiss
Militia here?

"If this White Guard goes on, we shall organise a Red Guard, and we
shall win. But that will mean Bolshevism. We are not Bolsheviks, but
Socialists to-day. We have offered to keep order in Berlin and here,
with a militia representing all parties, but they go on bombarding. It
is the old Prussian terrorism again. They have learnt nothing from the
war."

And, so, in the twilight, back the way we came, wondering at the
working of moral laws that have now subjected Berlin to a
self-inflicted punishment of bombardments and bombings worse than any
of those it inflicted on other cities.

Firing heavy artillery at crowded tenement houses, even with reduced
charges and plentiful blank, means a butcher's bill of several
thousands, mostly women and children, and damage to property of
several millions.

Next day we extract the following from the advertisement sheet of our
daily paper:--

    "Reinhard Brigade. Mine-Throwers."

    "Officers, non-commissioned officers and men with mine-thrower
    training urgently required. Comrades! Consider the crisis!
    Come and help! Spartacus must be crushed with every weapon.
    Report to the Brigade Reinhard, at the New Criminal Court,
    Turmerstrasse 91."

    "Obituary."

    "On the 12th March, innocent victims of these troubled times,
    through the destruction of my house by a mine-thrower, my
    little Adolf and Bertha, aged 12 and 8 years."

The behaviour of the Government can only be explained by their having
left the whole matter to Noske, who, in turn, left it to his military
advisers, Majors Gilsa, Pabst, and Hammerstein, who again were agents
only of the militarist reactionary faction. This faction intended to
exploit the crisis by killing two birds with one stone--the
anti-Bolshevists at Paris and the pro-Bolshevists at Berlin. Their
policy was to make an excuse for raising a large professional army
with which to suppress the revolution and, if the gods were kind, to
restore Germany's ancient _régime_ and its racial frontiers. For this
purpose atrocities were invented as a pretext for reprisals and for
recruiting and raising the pay of the Frei-Corps. The Government could
have kept order of a sort through the revolutionary corps if it had
kept in touch with the revolutionary councils; but it fought the corps
with flying columns of under-trained over-armed boys, and it fought
the councils with its patched-up majority of old parliamentary hands
and party hacks.

In the resultant civil war that raged, and still rages, all over
Germany one may distinguish certain combats more decisive than the
others. There were the conflicts in Berlin--of December against the
Marine Division, of January against the Spartacists, and of March
against the Republican Guard and other corps. In the provinces, the
expeditions against Bremen, Halle, Brunswick, and Munich. I saw
nothing of the first of these, but something of the fall of the
revolutionary movements of Halle, Brunswick, and Munich. And with each
of these failures ended some distinctive element of the German
revolution. With each of these failures the German revolution took a
fresh impetus and a more extreme form.

The trouble at Bremen was merely a collision between the centre of the
renascent reaction at Berlin and the original source of the revolution
among the soldiers and sailors of the seaboard towns. The revolution
first broke out at Bremen and was spread from there by parties of
sailors who established themselves in the leading towns of the
interior, including Berlin; and wherever they settled they became the
"Red Guard" of the revolution. Bremen was therefore not only the
Bethlehem of the new gospel, but was also the key position to the
control of the coast. And this control was indispensable to the
Government, which was negotiating with the Allies for the importation
of foodstuffs in mitigation of the blockade. For the revolutionary
extremists, recognising that the blockade was breeding revolt, kept
throwing every difficulty in the way of importing food. They first
refused to allow the German steamers to sail under the agreement, and
then refused to allow foodstuffs to be unloaded. The Government were
thus forced, probably not unwillingly, into military action against
the revolution in the interests of famine relief. When Gerstenberg's
flying column occupied Bremen in February with little serious
fighting, the revolutionary policy of barring off Germany from the
conservative West and turning it towards the Council government of
Russia finally failed. The desperate plan of strangling and starving
Germany into revolution was defeated by the German middle class, who
preferred, even at the cost of immediate civil war, to go into
economic slavery to France and England rather than to go into
political outlawry with Russia. The fall of Bremen really finished all
immediate chances of Russian "Bolshevism" in Germany.

The Halle affair in March was a less crucial business, though critical
enough for a time. The Saxon towns had been in a state of economic
unrest that increased as the impotence of the Weimar Assembly became
more obvious. Thus the smaller towns in the immediate neighbourhood
of Weimar, like Erfurt and Jena, became outposts of revolution,
permanently menacing the deliberations of the Assembly in the classic
groves of the Ilm. Small bands of revolutionaries even penetrated
Weimar itself, until the roads and railways were barred. It was some
weeks before the Saxon Frei-Corps of Jagers, under General Maerker,
were strong enough to attempt expeditions against the smaller
Thuringian towns. And the General himself had, in these early days,
more than one narrow escape. His small force was still very weak in
numbers and discipline when a general strike was declared at Halle,
with the avowed political object of cutting communications between the
Legislature at Weimar and the Administration at Berlin. Obviously, if
Weimar could be seized, or even surrounded by the revolutionaries, the
parliamentary system of government must collapse and a revolutionary
Saxony would divide the Prussian bureaucrats from the South German
burghers. This plan--if plan it was--and not merely a process of
inchoate and unconscious forces, was defeated by the Maerker
expedition to Halle; and those who are interested in the outside as
well as the inside of political events may learn something of what the
civil war in Germany was like in the following diary of my
experiences with this expedition.

_Friday Afternoon._--The green room of the Weimar Theatre--now the
National Assembly--and the War Minister Noske on a sofa, a big
beetle-browed, bullet-headed type of German, a Bismarck Mk. II., but
evidently underfed and overstrained. On a chair a sharp-nosed
intelligence officer, for War Ministers must be careful these days who
they see and what they say. After some talk I ask leave to go with the
Government troops who are to reopen the rail to Berlin by occupying
Halle. The intelligence officer demurs, but Noske good humouredly
agrees to my arguments, scribbles a word or two on the back of my
card, and hurries off to catch the Berlin train. He will have to spend
all night going round by Chemnitz and Dresden.

_Friday Midnight._--A fourth-class carriage in the third of three
troop trains conveying 4,000 men and 20 guns to Halle. Five of us are
perched on the narrow wooden seats; two officers in mufti, and two
Halle deputies going as Government delegates, one a brisk little
Democrat, the other a patriarchal Social-Democrat, in a long white
beard and a broad black hat. We make the best of it. One officer has a
candle, the other a stock of war adventures; I have a bottle of wine
and a budget of news from outside; the patriarch has sections of an
eel and views on the food question, which he roars like a hungry lion.
Bump! we are mostly on the floor. The engine of No. 2 has broken down,
and we have trodden on and derailed its tail. We pile into train No.
1, and get cushioned seats. The officers snore, the patriarch dozes,
rumbling like a distant storm. Only the little Democrat sits brooding.
"Oh, Halle! Halle!" he mutters, "that I should ever come to you like
this."

_Saturday Morning._--The General and I are marching up the road to
Halle; behind us officers in mufti, beside us the head of the column
of volunteers. The little General is telling me this is the seventh
town he and his flying column have occupied, but the first real big
one. An expert in Bolshevist busting, this tiny General of a toy army,
with the face and manner of a dear demure little old maiden lady. He
ignores politely the women and boys, who are shouting, "Bloodhounds!"
"Brutes!" "Vultures!" "Vermin!" and salutes scrupulously any burgher
bold enough to wave.

So we enter Halle, pass the factories and skyscrapers, where the hands
live stacked in tiers, and then occupy the station yard. The General
with a few officers and men, marches straight through the great
deserted station into the guardroom of the insurgent troops. The
guard, taken by surprise, seize their rifles, and some cock and point
them, shouting threats. The little General raps out an order like a
machine-gun, and after a long half-minute a man drops his rifle, the
others follow suit, and all file out--one shouting in a heart-broken
voice, "Is this all we can do?" A deputation of sailors arrives, fine
upstanding fellows, with intelligent faces. These are the real
fighters, and some hundreds of them are occupying a building in the
town. They have probably only come to find out what chance there is of
holding it, and the guns outside are answer enough, for they leave
abruptly. The General sends a summons to evacuate after them, and they
have cleared before their building is surrounded. "Those cursed blue
boys," says a young officer. "What wouldn't I have done for them
during the war, and now they've brought us to this."

_Saturday Afternoon._--The General with a few officers and a
half-company, is walking down to the Town Hall to arrange with the
local authorities. I am congratulating him on everything being so well
over--and add, as I see the market-place ahead packed with people and
ugly-looking roughs hooting us--that in England things would be about
going to begin. I've hardly said it before they do begin. The crowd,
annoyed at the hauling down of the red flag and hoisting of the red,
white, and black, storms the Town Hall, tears the machine-guns and
rifles from our guard there, and smashes them, seizes a motor and an
ambulance, which it afterwards runs blazing into the river, and
carries off two officers, whom it shuts up in the Red Tower, a
mediæval fortress. They then turn on our little party, which is in
rapid retreat on the Post Office, but we stand them off until we are
behind the iron gates. An angry mob howls outside, but when they get
to shaking or scaling the gates a movement from the sentries inside is
enough still to stop them. At last reinforcements arrive, forcing
their way through the crowd, which, however, falls on the last files
and tries to haul them off. We sally out and pull them in, shouting to
the soldiers, now as angry as the mob, not to shoot. But already there
comes the crack of rifles and the rattle of a machine-gun from another
position up the street. Firing becomes general. The crowd scatters in
all directions, and the empty streets round are picketed with
machine-guns. The General, regardless of roof snipers, comes round,
patting his young soldiers on the back. "Well," says he to me, "here
we are, and the only question is, are we holding Halle or is Halle
holding us?"

_Saturday Evening._--A long table in the Post Office. At one end the
little General, behind him two officers, one smiling, the other
scowling. On his right the two "Independent" tribunes of the people,
representing the workmen's councils, beyond them commandants of the
local barracks, at the foot representatives of the burgher committee
and the little Democrat, on the General's left representatives of the
soldiers' council, probably students. The Patriarch has, however,
disappeared, the march of events having been too rapid for him. The
General is very short with the student soldiers, and very urbane with
the Independent politicians who are or were in control of Halle--one
is another Bismarck type, Mk. III. this time, the other a Bernard Shaw
Mk. II. A strong combination of authority with audacity; but I doubt
the General with his steel-helmeted troops and machine-guns will be
stronger. Their case is that they kept order until the troops came,
and they can only restore it if the troops go. The General and the
burgher delegates accuse them of arming and agitating the proletariat,
which they indignantly deny. The discussion is interrupted at
intervals by the irruption of dingy individuals, who report disorders
and discoveries, and I suspect the General of having realised the
dramatic value of the messenger in Greek tragedy. Finally, the two
tribunes agree to put out posters that the troops have nothing to do
with the strike, and must be let alone. This negative result horrifies
the burghers, and the General, leaving the table, is besieged by
earwigging notables imploring him to arrest the two tribunes. "I saw
them leaving the house that fired the first shot," hisses a flabby
frock-coated party with a grog-blossomy nose. "Bernard Shaw" overhears
him, but only strokes his thin beard and his moustaches curl in a
cynical smile. He knows the General knows his business.

_Saturday Midnight._--I've been out and in through the pickets and
among the armed parties of the other side several times, and a major
in mufti and I are going out to a hotel. Two journalists who've made
their way in, and regret it, decide to follow us. Nearing the cleared
street, we turn up a side street and come right on an armed party. The
journalists, a few paces behind, bolt round the corner, which leads to
our being stopped and questioned. I engage their attention all I can
to give the major a chance of slipping off, which he wisely does.
Unfortunately, this gives time for a larger crowd to gather than I
can manage, and they march me off to the market-place, where they
become a mob. Ugly roughs and excited boys keep pressing in, and
several have seen me with the General. The ring round me gets savage,
and I have increasing difficulty in keeping those round me quiet. A
man shouts at me in Russian, asking whether I'm from Joffe. I
repudiate Joffe, but knowing Russian gets me a friend or two. One
calls up some armed sailors and persuades them to take me to their
guard-house. A plucky little burgher who has been appearing and
disappearing in the welter attaches himself to the party. The crowd
follows until a machine-gun opens near by and scatters it. Our party
gets smaller each time we run or shelter from the machine-guns, which
are playing on the plundering parties. I find the burgher will take me
in if I get rid of the escort, so, distributing some small notes, I
suggest we should all be better off at home. Some agree, others
object, but a machine-gun closures the debate without a division and I
spend the night on the friendly burgher's sofa.

_Sunday Morning._--I hear from the burgher that an aide-de-camp of the
General caught by the mob in mufti with the General's orders in his
pocket, soon after my escape, has been thrown into the river and shot
as he swam. The town is still in the hands of the revolutionaries,
but quite quiet except round the buildings held by the troops. After
changing my appearance and borrowing the burgher's hat, I go round in
a crowd of Sunday sightseers staring at the looted shops and the
bullet-starred houses. Near the Post Office there is sniping from the
roofs, and a hand grenade is thrown almost on top of us. There are
ugly red blotches in the streets among the broken glass. Running the
gauntlet of the pickets, I find the General very glad to see me. The
scowling officer shows me a sniper behind a chimney-pot who has just
shot the smiling officer. The situation militarily and politically is
temporarily at a deadlock, and the only interest in staying is the
risk of being sniped in the Post Office or mobbed in the town. The
General offers me a passage to Weimar with the "flying post."

_Sunday Afternoon._--The Halle flying ground. While one of the few
planes left is being patched up the officer is telling me of his
difficulties. He daren't leave the men alone for an hour. The plane
with the post for Weimar I travel with has to be represented as going
to Magdeburg, or the men might stop its starting. He holds on because
the planes are indispensable to the Government, but when he came back
from the front, and the orders and badges were torn from his coat,
"something broke in him." His family has always been military, but now
it's over, and he is going to the Argentine. But my pilot is tougher
stuff. A man of the middle class, pilot since 1912, fighting scout
through the war, a friend of the great fliers and of Fokker, he had
had good openings abroad. "But no," says he; "Germany's going down out
of control, but if it crashes I crash with it."

So after careful scrutiny to see that nothing has been half sawn
through, as it was a few days before, we climb in. The roar of the
motor drowns the distant rattle of the machine-guns, and Halle
disappears below into the dusk as we drive into the red glare of the
setting sun.

Germany at this time was like a seething pot. Outbreaks such as that
at Halle were only bubbles breaking out on the surface. At any moment
one expected the whole heaving, simmering mass to boil over. But,
wherever a centre of ebullition declared itself the Government
quenched the upheaval with a douche of Frei-Corps.

Such a centre from the first days of revolution was Brunswick. Indeed,
Brunswick had been such a centre of disturbance from the earliest
days of German history. The chronicles of Brunswick show the workmen
of that town always in the van not only of German but of European
movements. They were indeed Bolsheviks as early as 1292; and it was
largely owing to the improvement in the workmen's position that they
forced on the German towns in the following century that the general
risings of the proletariat, that led to civil war in England and
France, were in Saxony comparatively bloodless.[A]

And, as soon as the revolution broke out in the North Sea Coast towns,
Brunswick gave it its first welcome to the interior. Bodies of
sailors, travelling up from the coast as the vanguard of revolution,
had established it in Brunswick, the day after the first outbreak at
Wilhelmshaven; and thereafter Brunswick threw itself wholeheartedly
into a real revolutionary _régime_.

The little State of Brunswick consists of the mediæval town and a ring
of industrial suburbs separate from the town, with satellite rural
townlets and villages. The political life and vital heat of Brunswick
centre now in this mushroom ring of factories, where the old rebel
character of the State is more truly reproduced than among the
burghers and bauers of the dead town and dormant villages. Under
pressure from the workmen in these factories Brunswick established a
government that, unlike that of Berlin, was sufficiently revolutionary
to attempt to realise the social revolution. When the inevitable split
came between the Social-Democrats in power and the Independents in
opposition, Brunswick declared for the Independents. The free Republic
of Brunswick became a citadel of the Independent extremists, a centre
of revolutionary propaganda and a _corpus vile_ for the application of
revolutionary principles. And it was unfortunate that it made itself
so obnoxious to its big neighbour, Berlin, in its first two characters
that its services in the third capacity were overlooked. For Brunswick
was working out a _régime_ which was in fact a compromise between the
revolutionary institutions of council government and the established
parliamentary system of its constitutional Government. True
parliamentary institutions had under the leadership of extremists like
Merges been relegated rather to the background. But they had not been
abolished and remained ready to function, when required, as a sort of
Second Chamber and conservative counterbalance to the radical _régime_
of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils. Nor had this _régime_ so far
as I could ascertain done any irremediable material harm, while it had
certainly done real moral service. The propertied and professional
classes had been alarmed certainly; but had learnt to defend
themselves very effectively by strikes and refusal of taxes, and had
thereby obtained recognition of their rights as a numerical minority.
Feeling, of course, ran high; but the freedom of speech of the
burghers was never curtailed while the workmen's party was in power.
Of course, the workmen's leader, the hunchback tailor Merges, was
represented as a sort of ogre throughout Germany, but the Brunswick
burghers rather despised than dreaded him. Their opinion of the rule
of the "Arbeiter Rat," or Workmen's Board, is expressed in these lines
pasted on the pedestal of the equestrian statue representing Duke
William of ever pious and still immortal memory (obiit, 1884).

    "Good Old Bill, if you'll get down,
    Merges shall give up your crown.
    We'll put you on the Board, of course,
    And put the tailor on your horse."

As reaction developed at Berlin and revolution at Brunswick it became
evident that once again in its history a bullying Berlin would bash a
bumptious Brunswick. This simple solution as between the two centres
of the main conflict that has divided Germany was delayed by cross
complications coming from conflicts belonging to another plane, and to
an older chapter. Brunswick town, unlike Halle or Hamburg, was a free
Republic--more than that it was a semi-sovereign State. The
semi-sovereign rights of the lesser German States were one of the
ancient bulwarks used by the reactionary government as defences
against a levelling revolution. They were particularly dear to the
Centrum supporters of the Government as the temporal entrenchments of
the Clerical position. And so the free and Independent republicans of
Brunswick had a longer lease of power than might have been expected.

Finally, political and personal considerations combined to overcome
the reluctance of the Berlin Government to take military action
against a Free State. As usual the personal factor probably forced the
decision and the incident throws a sidelight on German politics of
this period.

Magdeburg, an industrial town on the main line between Berlin and
Brunswick and on the borders of Brunswick State, had been a political
stronghold of Majoritarian Social-Democracy. But it had been so
affected by the drift of the workmen to the left that by the end of
April the Independents believed they had a majority in that
parliamentary constituency. Now the representative of this
constituency was the moving spirit, the Machiavelli, of the
ministry--Landsberg. This Polish Jew has already been referred to as
the brains of the Government. He, as representing Majoritarian Social
Democracy and Erzberger as representing middle-class Clericalism, were
the cement of the coalition between Social-Democracy and the Centrum,
a coalition based on love of office and fear of the Opposition. So
Landsberg finding his own seat threatening defection to the Opposition
and joining a general strike of the Saxon towns, went down to
Magdeburg. But on his arrival he was seized by the revolutionaries,
put in a car, and sent off to Brunswick to be held to ransom. This
kidnapping of the reactionary Minister of Justice, second only to
Noske himself in importance, was a score for the revolution. But a red
Jew is kittle cattle to drive. Landsberg escaped from his captors, and
within a few days General Maerker and his merry men were marching on
Magdeburg from Halle. Magdeburg was occupied after slight resistance,
and became the base for operations against Brunswick. Only a _casus
belli_ was required and this was supplied when Brunswick, encouraged
by the Munich revolution, proclaimed a "Räte Republik," and invited
the Saxon towns to rally to the revolution and the "Soviet system."
This was immediately countered by the officials and clerks of
Brunswick organising a strike that crippled the Prussian railway and
the German postal and telegraph system. Whereupon Berlin declared that
it had ground for intervention in Brunswick, the State frontier was
closed and Frei-Corps expeditions advanced from Magdeburg and Hanover.
Skirmishes occurred at Helmstadt, Borsum and Wolfenbüttel and both
sides had losses. Brunswick called off the general strike, protested
against the violation of State right and tried to make terms. There
followed a pause in the operations during which the moderates on both
sides were trying to arrange matters. Meantime the Communists and
Council revolutionaries of Brunswick were preparing resistance, in the
confidence that the revolutionaries of the Saxon towns would rise in
the rear of the troops; while the reactionaries were mobilising
rapidly tanks and howitzers with the intention of giving the
Revolution the _coup de grâce_. It was at this moment that I decided
to go to Brunswick partly to study its revolutionary institutions
before they were wiped out, partly to prevent bloodshed if possible by
informing the revolutionary leaders as to the small prospect of
Brunswick, if it resisted, getting any support from Saxony or Prussia.
It was not an easy journey and the following account of it from my
diary may serve as an illustration of Germany at this time.

_Monday Evening._--The notorious Eden Hotel, headquarters of the
Berlin garrison and military police. I am waiting for a permit to go
with the expedition against Brunswick. When I went with the same
troops against Halle a month ago I got my permit from Noske himself,
but the captain in charge at the Eden Hotel is only second in real
importance to the War Minister. There is, I suppose, a War Office and
General Staff still, with generals and colonels, but the Government is
based on the volunteer corps and they are run from the Eden Hotel. And
now Brunswick, not for the first time, has championed the cause of
German revolution and challenged Berlin, which has become, not for the
first time, the centre of German reaction. And Berlin has determined
to bash the head of revolution in Brunswick as it broke its back in
Halle. True, Brunswick is a free State with its own constitution,
which only differs from that of Prussia in preserving the principles
of the November revolution; but it has become a centre of
revolutionary opposition connecting the industrial districts of
Westphalia with those of Saxony. There has been a plan for concerted
action. Brunswick has given the signal too soon and realised its
mistake too late. Brunswick, says the Eden Hotel, will fight in the
hope of support from the Saxon towns, not knowing that they will not
rise, for it has been isolated for a week.

_Tuesday Morning._--A fourth-class carriage in the "parliamentary" to
Magdeburg. There are third-class carriages, but a haversack on the
floor is more comfortable than a straight-backed wooden bench. But
imagine traffic between London and Derby reduced to three trains
daily, two of which stop at every station. A peasant woman sitting on
a sack is complaining:--"We get up at four every morning and work till
dark. The cabbages and potatoes lie at the stations for days; the sun
shines on them, the rain rains on them, and they rot--no trains--so we
starve in the fields and you starve in the towns. A burgher frau tells
how a barge load of American wheat has arrived at her town--"but what
use is it at that price?" A man explains the high price is only for
the extra ration and that most of it goes to make up the old ration at
the old rate. "But," objects another, "we shall have to pay for it all
the same, and we can't." "Emigration, that's what it means," says a
soldier. "Why emigrate?" says a young man--"socialisation and Council
Government are what's wanted, then the workmen will work and we can
pay." You can hear more sound politics and economics now in
fourth-class carriages than at Weimar, for hunger is the best
political education. But--"Oh, politics, always politics now,"
protests a pretty girl The soldier gallantly responds and the debate
becomes a Beatrice and Benedict duel, altogether too Shakespearean to
report.

_Tuesday Evening._--The General's headquarters. I hand my friend the
General my credentials from my right-hand pocket, in my left are
letters to Brunswick leaders. Public disorder makes for personal
orderliness, and getting passes mixed in his pockets cost an officer
acquaintance of mine his life lately. The General tells me he is
marching against Brunswick--horse, foot and artillery--next evening. I
can go ahead in the armoured train or an armoured car. But I explain
this time I want to see the occupation from the other side and so must
get into Brunswick well ahead. However, the General doesn't respond to
my request to be set down outside Brunswick from one of the aeroplanes
employed in distributing proclamations. Brunswick has been cut off by
road and rail for days, and he evidently prefers it should remain so.
Brunswick, he says, means to fight and must get a sharp lesson. Anyway
it's impossible for anyone to get in now. And at first sight one would
say he was right. Brunswick is sixty miles from Magdeburg by rail,
trains only run in other directions, and even for them one must have a
permit. All planes and cars are under control of the troops. So it
will have to be the "underground railway" for me. For, when you drive
a revolution underground it won't be long before there's an
underground railway. It's quite easy even for a foreigner without
local friends to get down the lifts and along the passages to it,
provided he can find the way in. And a good place to look for the
entrance is a newspaper office.

_Wednesday Morning._--A back room in a beerhouse of a back street in
Magdeburg. I am being booked through to Brunswick on the underground.
The "tickets" are being made out among the slops and my guide is
getting his instructions. For all tours on the underground are
personally conducted.

_Wednesday Evening._--A beerhouse in a back street of Brunswick. We
have run the blockade successfully, and are waiting to be sent for by
the revolutionary government. We reached Brunswick soon after dark,
having travelled hard all day. First, leaving Magdeburg by train and
going north, we got out at a wayside station where a carriage and pair
was waiting. This drove us at a great pace over the rolling uplands to
the outskirts of a village. Whom it belonged to I didn't hear, but it
had the best pair of horses I saw in Germany. Next came a sharp run
across country to a halt on a local steam tramway, which took us down
to a junction where we got a train. The train had to be left
unostentatiously _en route_. Fortunately, German trains don't go very
fast nowadays; but standing on the end platform and waiting to jump
while my Communist guide turned somersaults on the embankment, I
should have preferred even my lop-winged Halle aeroplane to the
Brunswick "underground." Another walk to a local station from which a
train ran backwards and forwards to Brunswick. As we arrived it came
up loaded with refugees who were retiring to country farms to escape
the imminent invasion of the Prussian troops.

_Wednesday Midnight._--Government House Brunswick.--The town is
plunged in darkness but the Government building is all ablaze with
lights and a-bustle with figures hurrying to and fro past the lighted
windows. Inside there is a curious nightmare feeling of hampered haste
and of imminent menace. Round a long table in an upper room sits a
sort of council of war distractedly discussing whether Brunswick shall
resist the Prussian troops that are due to arrive at dawn. In a sort
of drawing-room adjoining, other members of the Independent Government
sit about listlessly in fauteuils brought over from the palace, or
pace restlessly about the room. A Communist is trying to spur the
Council on to fight, assuring them that the soldiers and sailors are
ready to face the tanks and trench mortars--which is true, and that
the workmen will support them--which is not. A sailor suddenly appears
in the Council room excitedly waving an object in his hand which it
seems is a bomb that has just been found hidden in the cellars--but
whether intended to blow up the revolutionaries or to be subsequently
found by the reactionaries and exploited as an "atrocity" is not
clear. Anyway, no one pays any attention to him, and annoyed at this
he proceeds to take it to pieces to prove it's a real bomb. I persuade
him to go away and drown it.

Soon after the Council decide not to fight. This definite decision
wakes us all up from the nightmare. Telephone orders are at once sent
out to the outposts, everyone hurries off on some mission, and as we
go home the dark alleys are full of dim hastening groups hauling heavy
objects--machine-guns and rifles to be thrown into the river or
buried.

_Thursday Morning._--A hotel window looking on the main square. I am
taking down the history of revolutionary Brunswick from the dictation
of one of the leading revolutionaries, while below the Prussian troops
are marching in. The organisation of the Independent Government has
made good in its last crisis and not a shot has been fired, to the
openly expressed disappointment of the invaders. The hotel, awkwardly
enough, has been commandeered as an auxiliary headquarters, and I have
to escort my informant out past groups of officers and see him safely
away into the "underground railway." He is one of the few wanted men
who get clean away. Merges and others escaping in aeroplanes and in
cars are with few exceptions caught. Merges himself, subsequently, is
released by friendly jailers.

The burghers in the streets exult at their deliverance and some of the
girls throw flowers to the troops. A young volunteer in an armoured
car catches a bunch gracefully and I recognise him as a scion of the
princely house of Reuss. At the back of the crowd stalwart men in
ill-fitting civilian clothes glower gloomily. A girl at an attic
window in a side street cries shrill abuse at the "steel helmets" and
one boy in joke points his rifle at her. It goes off, the bullet stars
the plaster and the boy looks as terrified as the girl. It is the only
shot fired at the fall of the Free Republic of Brunswick.

_Thursday Evening._--The General has deposed the Government of
Independents and set up another of Majoritarians, has arrested all the
leaders he can find and has proclaimed the severest form of martial
law. Many burghers are already regretting the revolutionary _régime_.
The streets are almost deserted for it is already dusk and no one may
be out of doors after sundown. In the shadows under the overhanging
gables of the mediæval market-place gleams the steel helm of a
Prussian picket. Other cloaked and helmed figures gather round a fire
down a side street. Brunswick is back in the Middle Ages and these
might be Tilly's men. A fat burgher creeps cautiously past the hotel.
Every evening for years he has trotted to the cosy beer cellar round
the corner. Shall these bedamned Prussians keep a free Brunswicker
from his beer. After several false starts he marches boldly out across
the market. Bang goes a blank cartridge from the Prussian sentry and
the burgher bolts back into obscurity. The liberty of Brunswick is no
more.

The establishment of a Räte Republik at Munich got more attention than
the Brunswick attempt but was really less interesting because less
indigenous. The relative importance of the two was more accurately
assessed at Berlin. Berlin has always had a difficulty in taking
Munich politics seriously. It has had to recognise its superiority in
Art and Literature, but compensates itself in matters political by an
amused arrogance not unlike the attitude of London to Dublin. But
Munich is not Bavaria. If it were, the Prussians and Wurtembergers
would never have ventured to interfere; for the Bavarian is far too
fierce a fighter and too jealous of his freedom for all the rest of
Germany to coerce him as a nation. However, it soon became evident
that Munich Communism represented only a section of the Munich workmen
and was resented by Bavaria as a whole, with the exception of the
proletariat in the large industrial towns. Even so, the Berlin
Government acted cautiously. It was indeed in a difficult position;
for the policy that Scheidemann's socialism stood for was one of
compromise with political clericalism and provincial particularism.
His minister, Preuss, then framing the constitution, had been
reluctantly compelled to reject the conception of the more radical
reformers who had hoped to found a wholly uniform and wholly united
centralised German Socialist State. The Government had been forced to
use the political jealousies of the German States and the clerical
prejudices of the Centrum as weapons against the social revolution. It
would not be too much to say of this period of German politics that
only the revolutionary adherents of the Council movement were Germans;
while the upper and middle classes had again become Prussians, Saxons
or Bavarians. And now it had become necessary to coerce the capital of
Bavaria, the centre of Roman Catholicism and the most sensitive and
important of the minor kingdoms. And this, too, at the very time when
everything was being done to induce German-Austria, Bavaria's
neighbour, to accept the same sort of position in the Realm as that
held by Bavaria. It was a most awkward predicament and the German
Government showed less than its usual tactlessness in dealing with it.
It arranged with the Bavarian bourgeois Government, when matters came
to a crisis at Munich, that it should take refuge at Bamberg, where it
could be protected by the Government's troops centred at Weimar. Then
it arranged with Würtemberg and Baden to supply troops to restore this
Bamberg _ancien régime_, supporting them with Saxons and, at first,
keeping the Prussian corps in the background. Operations were then
begun, first against the Franconian towns of North Bavaria, where
Bavarian sentiment was weak. Any attempt against Munich was delayed
until a raging Press propaganda against the rule of the Munich
Bolshevists in the Wittelsbach Palais, and the crushing of the
movement everywhere else, had excited the class feeling of the
propertied farmers and burghers and had exorcised temporarily Bavarian
jealousy of Prussia. All this, however, would not have ensured Berlin
success, but for the inherent weakness of the Munich revolutionaries.
The movement for Council Government and general Communism had lost all
chance of success when it was forced either by the policy of its
enemies or by the jealousies of its supporters into the hands of men
like the Russian extremists, Leviné and Levien.

I saw a good deal of both men during my stay in Munich a few days
before their fall, and both were very frank as to the hopelessness of
their position. They were very different. Leviné was a black Jew of a
common and rather criminal type, with a bad record, but great ability
of a sort. Levien was a cosmopolitan and a Bohemian--in appearance and
abilities a dissolute and demoralised version--a Bohemian and
Bolshevist caricature--of the Treasury official who now represents us
and rules Germany on the Reparation Commission.

A curious picture it was this Communist dictatorship in the
Wittelsbach palace. Outside--crowds of workmen waiting for the posting
of the bulletins in which decrees were proclaimed. Inside--a great
coming and going of seedy-looking revolutionaries--a frantic
clattering of typewriters pounded by unkempt girls--hurried conclaves
in corners--remains of meals on marble tables--the dubious atmosphere
of a Quartier Latin garret--the high pressure of a Bolshevist
headquarters and the melancholy madness of a Wittelsbach pavilion.

The political situation in Bavaria after the revolution had rested
entirely on the personal power of the idealist Jew, Kurt Eisner. His
influence over both revolutionaries and reformers produced in Munich a
coalition of Socialists in which the predominant element was
progressive; whereas in Berlin, for want of any such personality the
coalition split up into reactionaries and revolutionaries. The
assassination of Eisner and the disablement of Auer on 21st February
were succeeded by some weeks of the Hoffmann Government during which
the issue as between parliamentary and council government was defining
itself. The distribution of force at this time appears from a division
in the Assembly of Councils where the proclamation of a Räte-Republik
(a Council State) was outvoted by 230 to 70; Levien himself, the
Bolshevist, declaring against it as premature. But during March the
strong movement to the left and towards a Council constitution,
noticeable in the Berlin Räte-Congress, made apparently even greater
progress in the Bavarian industrial towns. Majority-Socialists, the
Social-Democrats, found their followers going over _en masse_ to the
Independents, while the latter lost equally heavily to the Communists.
In Prussia the Majoritarians had made up for this loss of popular
support by creating a military force strong enough to resist any
attempt to overthrow them by other than constitutional means. But in
Bavaria the Majority party found itself being left in the air. It
seems thereupon to have adopted a policy of outbidding its opponents.
At Augsburg, late in March, Niekisch, a leading Majoritarian, declared
for a Räte-Republik exclusive of Parliament, and succeeded in getting
it voted. The vote was later rescinded under influence of the
Independents and Communists, but restored under Majoritarian pressure.
The same curious reversal of rôles followed in Munich, where a
Majoritarian, Thomas, pressed for a Räte-Republik. A commission of
Left Majoritarians and Right Independents was appointed on April 4th
and adopted a programme including the dictatorship of the working
class, the organisation of a council system on an industrial and
professional basis, the socialisation of industries, banks, and land,
the revolutionising of administrative, judicial, and educational
systems, the separation of Church and State, compulsory work for all
classes, the formation of a Red Army, and alliance with Hungary and
Russia.

This programme was to be executed by a Central Council and
Commissioners, equally composed of Independents, Communists, and
Social-Democrats. At first the Communists refused to join and
attacked the new Government bitterly as a humbug; but later, after
proclamation of the Räte-Republik and a Council constitution, agreed
to co-operate in the Central Council in an advisory capacity. The
Räte-Republik was proclaimed on April 7th. The Hoffmann Government
left; but soon after reappeared, first at Nuremberg and then at
Bamberg, where it established itself as a sort of Bavarian Weimar. The
Berlin Government at once refused recognition to the new _régime_,
while it gave every countenance and support to the Bamberg Government.

A few days later, Sunday the 13th, a "_putsch_" under the leadership
of a _ci-devant_, von Seifertitz, and a Majoritarian, Löwenfeld,
supported by the Republican _Schutztruppe_, overthrew this Government
and arrested the Independent members of the Central Council, as also
Mühsam, a non-partisan idealist. The Communists then took immediate
action and a hundred or so armed workmen under Toller, a young
Independent officer, ejected as many soldiers from the railway station
at the cost of two killed and a few wounded and some broken windows--a
scuffle represented in Berlin as a desperate battle in which the
station and surrounding houses had been completely destroyed. The
Communists then formed a "Bolshevist" Government under Commissioners,
among whom were included the Russians Levien and Leviné, and an
Executive Council, on which were two Independents and a moderate,
Maenner--an able man in charge of finance.

Of course in this curious _chasser-croiser_ it is open to anyone to
regard the Majoritarians as mere governmental _agents provocateurs_,
working for a premature proclamation of the Räte-Republik, with such
motives as it may suit the critic to attribute to them. This was the
view taken by the _Times_; but personally I am inclined to see merely
the manoeuvring of demagogues ambitious of power, in a people with
little political experience. To retain power, the Majoritarian
Socialists of Prussia were prepared to re-introduce militarism; while
those of Bavaria were prepared to introduce "Bolshevism" for the same
object.

Both the course and the collapse of Munich Communism give an answer to
the question whether Russian Bolshevism can take root in Germany. If
Bolshevism meant Sovietism and merely is a constitutional conflict
between parliamentary and council government, it could. There is no
such traditional belief in the parliamentary system in Germany as to
make it an essential foundation of constitutional government. Neither
the old Berlin Reichstag nor the Weimar Assembly acquired popular
confidence. But if by Bolshevism we mean an economic class conflict
concerning the dictatorship of the proletariat, the answer seems to be
that it cannot be established in Germany, under normal conditions.

The short life of the Munich Commune seemed to show this. The
Government consisted of Commissioners--a sort of inner Cabinet, an
Executive Council--a sort of Ministry, and an Assembly of
Councils--the Legislature. The first was Bolshevist, in general
standpoint, the second Independent Socialist and Moderate Communist,
the third predominantly Moderate Socialist. The Commissioners,
especially the Russians, did not enjoy the confidence of the Assembly,
still less of the garrison. I believe that they would soon have been
replaced by a Socialist _régime_, but for the military action of
Prussia and Würtemberg.

Nor were the measures taken by this _régime_ what could be called
Bolshevist. The absurd newspaper yarns, reproducing all the old
calumnies against Russian Council Government, including the
communisation of women, gave quite a false impression. I have a
complete list of the Communist measures, and they contain nothing very
sensational and mostly existed anyway only on paper. I will give two
examples which I heard discussed before the Assembly. The _cafés
chantants_, a great feature of Munich, had all been closed on moral
grounds, not without justification, as those who know Munich will
admit. The delegates of the employés appealed against this as throwing
three thousand people out of work. The debate showed that this measure
was largely a protest of the workmen against the irregular lives of
the Communist leaders themselves, and the cafés were allowed to
re-open under the control of a committee of the Assembly. Further, the
middle-class papers had been suspended by the Commissioners. So
representatives of the Communist and Independent papers rose to say
they would suspend publication until this prohibition was removed.
This threat was carried out and at the time I left the prohibition was
about to be repealed.

As to the practical results of the Bolshevist _régime_ it was
difficult to judge from the two or three weeks it was running; all the
more that half this time was passed in the general strike proclaimed
by the Communists which they could not prevent after their accession
to power. But after work was resumed it was clear that conditions were
normal. Order was not disturbed and the revolutionary tribunal as to
which wild stories were told was a mild affair. It was even recognised
by the local bar--and when an agent of the Anti-Bolshevist League was
caught with false Communist papers and large funds he was only fined
the amount in his possession. Telegraph officials, accomplices of a
spy in running a secret telegraphic service to Nuremberg, were
acquitted as only irresponsible agents. Russian Bolshevism would have
given them a short shrift. The only practical difference between
Communist Munich and Independent Brunswick was that the Munich
revolutionaries not having the hearty support of the garrison had to
form volunteer corps of Red Guards. These, like the Government
volunteers, were highly paid and fed, the means being provided partly
by money confiscated as illegal remittances abroad, partly by printing
new notes. The extent of the attempted exportation of money may be
guessed from the thousand mark note, the only convenient means of
exportation, having been worth fourteen hundred marks. The removal of
the note printing presses to Bamberg embarrassed the Communists for a
time, but they had succeeded while I was there in printing twenty mark
notes, which were, of course, declared worthless by the German
Government.

At the time I left Munich the garrison had declared in favour of
negotiating with the expeditions menacing Munich from Augsburg and
Ingolstadt, and the workmen, though against negotiating with the
troops, would clearly have welcomed a peaceful solution even at the
cost of expelling the Russians. This I was able to report to the
Premier Hoffmann at Bamberg, whom I found under the impression that
negotiations were hopeless. Three days later, they were opened at his
invitation at Nuremberg, but led to nothing, as the workmen would not
agree to disarm. The troops accordingly marched in, driving the "red
army" before them; and Munich, less happy in its leaders than
Brunswick, became the scene of the usual sniping and skirmishing by
insurgents with machine-gunning and bombarding by the troops. The
influence of the Russians was probably responsible for one
particularly ugly incident, the cold-blooded murder of a number of
"hostages" in reprisal for the wholesale shooting of prisoners by the
troops. Leviné, the leading member of the Russian clique, was captured
and shot and several less dangerous and even quite harmless
revolutionary or Radical leaders also perished, some "by accident."
Levien was arrested some months later but escaped to Vienna. The new
Bavarian Ministry, or rather the old Bamberg Government restored, then
took on the same character as the Ministry in Berlin; that is a
Government by military force behind a Moderate Socialist façade.

The failure of the revolution in Munich was its last effort in this
first volume of the German revolution. The movement thereafter adopted
Leipzig as its centre, an Independent stronghold; but when later the
Government picked a quarrel with Leipzig, occupied it with troops and
abolished its Independent _régime_, there was no resistance.

In this autumn of 1919 the German revolution seems hunted to death. It
has, however, only gone to ground.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] "Brunswick succeeded more thoroughly than any other German town in
reaching the goal of the whole development of mediæval civic life--that
is the emancipation and elevation of the working class....

"The Guilds developed unusually early in Brunswick those activities
which rendered them everywhere schools of political education and
centres of revolution. In Brunswick first of all did the workmen make
head against the Burghers. And if old records can be trusted what
immoderate ambitions appear even in their first rising in 1292. They
were not merely in revolt against abuses or for some moderate
participation in government, but proposed nothing less than the
suppression of the old Constitution and to make themselves absolute
masters of the town." Chroniken der Deutschen Städte. Braunschweig. Vol.
I., p. xxvi.




CHAPTER IV

RUIN AND RECONSTRUCTION


The mistake we are all making about Germany over here, and a very
natural one, is that we can't realise what Germany to-day is like.
While we are rapidly getting back to the material and mental
conditions of pre-war days, Germany is daily getting farther and
farther away from us. It is difficult to express the difference. We
all know the curious psychological change that comes over our lives
when the doctor tells us we must "give up"; how then in a moment, as
we sink into bed, we are changed from responsible personalities,
ruling our own and others' lives, to helpless encumbrances ruled by
doctors and nurses; and how we only recover our rights through a long
convalescence. Germany has given up. It carried on until it collapsed,
and now lies semi-comatose; and we, still absorbed in our quarrel,
keep pestering it with solicitors and foreclosures instead of patching
it up with doctors and food. Descriptions of economic conditions in
Germany must therefore be read with the realisation that they are
morbid symptoms. Germany may be, no doubt is, working its way through
revolution to a saner, sounder condition, but at present is as
abnormal and helpless as a snake changing its skin. Meantime, we,
using the complete control over Europe that the war has put into our
hands, have so interfered with this process as to risk making out of
Germany as great a danger to the existing order in Europe as we made
out of Russia.

Nor is the danger one of to-day only. In ten years' time when the
Blockade will be no more than a memory, but when the surviving
childhood of Germany, bodily wasted and mentally warped, comes to
maturity, Europe will suffer for it. The fathers will have eaten their
sour grapes by then, but the children's teeth will still be set on
edge.

"I do not complain of your blockade, it ended the war," said to me a
former Minister and a leader of political thought. "Yes, I've lost
four stone since I left the trenches"--he was indeed only the
framework of a once big and burly man with the low voice and languid
bearing of the underfed. "I'm all right on what I get, it's the
children--I could give you statistics, but you wouldn't believe them;
I never do. Go and see them yourself."

So I went. First a tour of the cellars of the great tenement houses of
Berlin--cellars closed before as unfit for habitation, but now, under
stress of house shortage, lived in by the large families of the German
working class. In one I find a war widow keeping five children on the
bare ration: 5 lb. of potatoes, 5 lb. of bread per head a week, ½ lb.
of meal and 1 lb. of jam when they can afford it and find it. The
bigger children get a quart of skim-milk a week, too sour for anything
but soup--the younger about two quarts of full-milk. They are having
their supper--cabbage and potatoes. The younger children nibble
suspiciously at gifts of chocolate. They do not know what it is and
suspect a new "substitute." The younger children look better than the
elder. The eldest boy has lost his job because he "can't keep his
feet." The mother is emaciated. Next door is another family--the
father, a painter, is in work, but is continually losing days from
"stomach-trouble." They have lost one child from decline.

And so on, always the same stories of struggle against decline from
want of fats or sugar, for the sugar supply failed when the Poles
occupied Posen--against dirt from want of soap--against dark and
cold, for the gas and coal are getting daily shorter.

Then I went to a public soup kitchen where a long queue of every class
was waiting for its plate of potato-soup, just potatoes, absolutely
nothing else, and they too deducted from the week's ration. "Splendid,
splendid soup," says an enthusiastic little man, a small shopkeeper,
perhaps, "not a rotten potato in the whole plateful."

Thence to the crèches and children's hospitals of the organisation
started by the Empress Frederick and run for many years by English
ladies. In these big, bright rooms there was the same ominous quiet as
in the dark cellars. "We can keep them alive when we get them in time,
but we can't do more. We can fill them, but we can't feed them with
this," said the sister, ladling out potatoes and cabbage to the older
children and oatmeal gruel to the younger. Everywhere swollen bellies
and shrunken limbs--children of three that had nothing actually wrong
with them but couldn't yet stand--children with "English sickness" as
rickets is called--children of school age that couldn't be sent to
school because they were so mentally and physically backward. Here and
there a sturdy infant that owed a better start to some stronger
mother, but the most of them lying silent or wailing feebly. "We
could save even that one," says the sister, unwrapping a baby so
shrivelled it looked scarcely human, "but we can get nothing, though
they give us here whatever there is. They know it's the children that
matter most now."

Children have always meant much to the Germans, and in those days of
growing disgust with the past and of growing despair as to the future
they meant so much that nothing else seemed ever to matter to the
women at any rate. I heard a woman prominent in politics say she was
glad to hear that the Allies were going to occupy Essen, Düsseldorf
and the industrial district, because then they must see what was
happening to the children there, owing to the blockade and to the
barring off of the milk supply from across the Rhine.

I soon saw enough to be satisfied that though food could still be got
at a price in the eating houses of Berlin, private households of the
whole working class and lower middle class were so straitened for food
that some members of each family were being starved; either because
they were too sickly to digest such food as could be got or because
they were giving it to the children. The same conclusion was come to
by the numerous Commissions sent out to report, even though these
were generally composed of young officers; instead, as they should
have been, of experienced medical men and food experts. These
Commissions were given every facility for estimating how far
under-nourishment had deteriorated the working power of the poor and
was deterring them from work. Also how far the low development and
high death-rate of the children was due to this. And their reports
show what a terrible responsibility we assumed when we maintained the
blockade after the armistice, as a means of political pressure and a
method of penal procedure. These reports are easily accessible to
English readers, so I will only give here, for what they are worth,
the conclusions come to by one representative neutral and one native
authority. A Copenhagen association for studying the economic results
of the war, estimated that the German population, which at the
beginning of the war was about 67.8 millions, would, but for the war,
have risen by now to about 70 millions and had sunk to about 65
millions. Of this decrease 3.5 millions was due to diminished
birth-rate and 2.1 millions to increased mortality. In the last years
of war the birth-rate fell to one-half. Of the increased deaths,
700,000 were ascribable to insufficient nourishment, mainly in the
last two years of war. In 1918 the death-rate for both sexes over 60
increased by half and doubled for children between 4 and 14. My
observations also suggest that it was children of this age that
suffered most from the blockade. The loss of about two millions of men
in the prime of life, the decreased vitality of the women and children
who suffered especially from the blockade, and the general economic
conditions of the country, make any early re-establishment of previous
productivity impossible.

Again, in the _Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift_ one, Geheimrat
Rübner, compares losses by war and blockade as follows:--

                       Military losses by      Civil losses
                        Wounds.   Disease.     by blockade.

  1st year of war       481,506     24,394        88,235
  2nd   "      "        330,332     30,329       121,174
  3rd   "      "        294,743     30,190       259,627
  4th   "      "        317,954     38,167       293,700[B]
  5th   "      "         62,417     10,902         ---
                      ---------    -------      --------
                      1,486,952    133,982       762,736
                      ---------    -------      --------

According to this estimate the blockade by the third year was causing
almost as heavy losses as the war itself; and a calculation on this
basis suggests that the continuance of the blockade after the
armistice for six months, must have cost Germany at least 100,000
lives.

Presumably we intended the pressure of our blockade to ensure prompt
acceptance of our peace conditions. If this was our policy, it was a
dangerous mistake. A people, as docile and disciplined as the Germans,
would have accepted any terms dictated them while still under the
impression of their military defeat and of the moral derailment caused
by the revolution. They would have welcomed our armies as allies in
spite of the efforts to rally them made by Chauvinist or Bolshevist
extremists. And nothing that a foreign State could have done was
better calculated to make such efforts successful than the blockade
and the boycott. Neither in Germany nor in Russia have we learnt that
it is better to feed an idealist than to fight him. It is only those
who fast who see visions.

The food scarcity from which Germany was suffering during the six
months I spent there, was something between the food shortage from
which we were then emerging and the famine we were imposing on Russia.
Germans were not dropping dead in the streets as they were in Russia;
but, on the other hand, Germans were not merely being restricted to a
sufficient ration of simple food as were we in England. The German
rations were insufficient both in quantity and quality. This was
especially the case in the essential elements of nourishment; in
bread-stuffs, fats, and sugar. Bread was particularly bad; and I
realised as I never had before that if one cannot live by bread alone,
bread alone is what one cannot live without. So rotten bad was the
blockade bread that the staff of life became little better than a stab
in the vitals. This punishment of the Prussian Prometheus should not
be overlooked when we cast up the reckoning. But how can we realise
it? I remember, the day after I got back from Germany, seeing a girl
in a Berkshire village come out from a baker's shop with a large piece
of white bread and give it to her donkey. Three days before I would
have pulled her and her cart all round the town for that bread.

During my first weeks in Berlin I found that I was being continually
reminded of the lines of the American poet:--

    The window has a little pane,
      And so have I.
    The window's pane is in its sash,
      I wonder why.

And after wondering why for some time I asked a doctor friend. "Oh,"
said he, "that's only the war bread. It will last some two months or
so, and then you'll be all right again. If it goes on longer I'll give
you a medical certificate for invalids' bread." But I could not face
those two months. I used to bring bread back from Weimar, where it was
better in quality, and after it went mouldy, boil it up into puddings.
Travelling, I lived mainly off imported tins of oatmeal cooked in a
stove of my own invention, for portable fuel such as petrol, spirits
of wine, etc., was unprocurable. Here is the patent, which tourists on
the Continent may find useful pending the permanent peace promised us
by Paris. You take a small oblong biscuit tin and cut out one end. You
stand your pot or a pan on the tin, roll up a newspaper, light it and
shove the lighted end into the tin, stopping it from burning too fast
with the tin lid. You can boil a kettle with a number of the
_Tag-Blatt_, and the morning paper heats your porridge instead of, as
usual, cooling it. I say nothing of the mental and moral advantages.

And if the bread was deleterious, the showy-looking biscuits and cakes
that flaunted shamelessly in the shop windows were positively deadly.
What they were made of German "substitute" experts alone know, but
mainly, I should think, saccharine and sawdust.

While this state of affairs was mostly due to the blockade,
statistics of German home cereal production before the war suggest
that, with anything like the increase of home production that we
brought about in England, there should have been enough to provide the
population with wholesome bread. And Germany, both from its superior
administrative organisation and from its far larger proportion of
home-grown food, seemed likely to have done better than we did. But,
both in total production and in production per acre there was a heavy
fall, amounting to as much as about 50 per cent. in such important
crops as rye and potatoes; while the slight recovery recorded in 1918
was due to a very favourable season.

And the reason for this collapse was loss of labour power in men and
animals and of fertilisers, natural and artificial. Women in Germany
do not play the large part in field work that many of us supposed. The
greater proportion of the heavy work of cereal production was done by
immigrant labour, and for that the prisoner labour seems to have been
a very inadequate substitute. When this disappeared the effort to
induce unemployed to go on the land was as complete a failure as might
have been expected from our experience. To this loss of labour must be
added the loss of agricultural land in the province of Posen, now
occupied by the Poles, from which Berlin and the Saxon industrial
districts drew their grain and potatoes. Thereafter the potato ration
in Leipzig was for some time reduced from 5 lb. to 2 lb. weekly.

The importation of flour from America made at first little difference.
It cost far too much and came to far too little. Meat was nearly
always procurable at a price, and, if one knew where to go, was good
enough. And for a hundred marks or so, equivalent to five pounds at
the pre-war rate of money, quite a decent dinner could be got in
select restaurants.[C]

The organisation of food supply was distinctly good. The conditions in
Germany were indeed far more difficult than in England. Instead of
having merely to control the importation at the main ports in Germany
the supply had to be controlled before it left the hands of the
individual farmer. This could, of course, only be done on broad
lines. The system followed was to divide the country up into
administrative areas corresponding to the local governments and
roughly to apportion the supply of food products to the population.
This resulted in certain areas becoming surplus and others deficit
regions; and the surplus regions were then compelled to supply a
certain proportion of their abundance to their less fortunate
neighbours. But, of course, no control, however meticulous, could
prevent rural districts from feeding full before anything went to the
industrial districts, or could stop illicit trading between the
well-to-do and the farmers. This "schleich-handel" or sneak trade kept
the profiteer well supplied throughout the war with farm produce.
After the revolution this profiteers' sneak trade was supplemented by
a proletariat sneak trade, in which plundered stores were hawked
through the poor quarters by broken soldiers and miscellaneous
brigands. In Berlin, round the Alexanderplatz, there was perpetual
skirmishing between these "wild traders" and the patrols of the
Frei-Corps. The efforts to suppress the sneak trade of the well-to-do
classes supporting the Government were not so drastic. Butter could
generally be bought through the hotel waiters at forty marks a pound.

There was noticeable in all this a marked deficiency of public spirit in
respect to private life. The German has for so long been drilled and
dragooned in his public life that his civic conscience is little
developed. Whereas in England one had the impression that the government
and authorities, and especially the army, were the worst offenders
against national economy and the mass of the middle class the most
conscientious, in Germany it seemed quite the other way. Undoubtedly one
of the irritants that excited the revolution was the failure of the
rationing system to secure an equitable distribution--or anything more
than a minimum of certain staple foods.

This food shortage is, of course, a cause as well as a consequence of
the economic collapse of Germany. German economic life, swept away for
years on the tide of war effort, now revolves round and round in a
vicious circle like a dead carcase in an eddy after a flood. Famine
and fighting have made the people too weak and too weary to work; but
until they work they cannot get food from abroad or grow it at home.
That is the economic vicious circle. The boycott and blockade have
made the people too restless and revolutionary to reconstruct and
remodel their constitutional institutions; and until they do so they
are to be boycotted and embargoed. That is the political vicious
circle in foreign affairs. In all regions of economic life one finds
this endless chain of cause and effect revolving round Paris and
fettering such energies as are left to Germany.

This is not the place for an estimate of the material sacrifices we
have made and are making, so as to coerce Germany into accepting the
peace conditions of Paris and into suppressing its own revolutionary
movements. I would only point out that a brisk trade between France
and Germany was proceeding all through these months of blockade. For
example, an acquaintance in Switzerland who wanted in February a
certain well-known make of French tyre was told by his garage that
they could get them cheaper than in France if he did not mind where
they came from. They came via Germany. And no sooner was the Treaty
signed than a swarm of American agents descended on Berlin, buying up
businesses right and left, as also such stocks as were left. Small
wonder, with the mark at one-quarter its pre-war value. As to _objets
d'art_ and paintings, the ruin of the plutocracy and the low rate of
exchange threaten to strip Germany far more effectively than any
German raiders could strip the villas of France and Belgium. But in
this legitimate indemnity we English have not benefited. We are too
much afraid of "dumping," no doubt.

There are still probably many in England who fear that German
competition will begin immediately with the raising of the blockade.
Apart from the political and social conditions that make impossible an
early convalescence of German industry from its complete collapse, the
following official data taken from the preface to new regulations for
the textile industry, show the conditions to which this industry was
reduced before the revolution. This document it may be noted, is not
one prepared for foreign consumption.

At the outbreak of war German industry had a stock of 300,000 bales of
cotton on hand, and as much more was held by the Bremen merchants. And
as much more again was imported up to the breach with Italy in May,
1915. The stock then was 600,000 bales. During the war 200,000 bales
were seized in Belgium and Poland. This supply allowed the German
mills an output of 4 per cent. to 5 per cent. of their annual peace
output of about a million tons. The annual local wool production
during the war was 7,000 tons, flax 20,000 tons, hemp 11,000 tons,
artificial wool 25,000 tons, and artificial cotton from rags, etc.,
33,000 tons.

Attempts to grow cotton substitutes were a failure. Nettle fibre in
1916 amounted to 200 tons, turf fibre 2,000 tons, reed fibre 1,000
tons. Artificial fabrics (stapel-fasser), on the other hand, rose to
an annual amount of 10,000 tons, and seem to have a future. Paper
thread rose to 150,000 tons annually, but is only a war expedient. The
home production of fibre was about 2 per cent. of the previous
importation.

These official figures show that the arrears now required are such
that if they could be supplied they could not be paid for. A value of
about five milliards is required as compared with a value of 1-½
milliards imported before the war, and 5 milliards is about the total
value of all raw material imported annually before the war. The only
prospect of supply otherwise is from home-made artificial fibres, and
that only if they are protected against foreign cotton, which is
absurd.

All the proposals now under discussion for improving methods of
production by co-ordinating and controlling the factories even if
feasible and effective will not, in the opinion of competent persons
here, make up for any material proportion of the loss of productive
power due to present conditions both of capital and labour. They wish
to get this and other industries restarted, not with any prospect of
profit, but to provide clothing and work for the industrial
population.

Of course, if the economic policy of the Treaty is ever realised and
we artificially stimulate the production of Germany and strangle its
consumption, we shall, if the country recovers, and is resigned to
work under such conditions, run a real danger of a dumping of a most
dangerous character. The semi-servile employment of the Germans could
under such conditions be used to fight the efforts of our workmen for
economic freedom; just as the semi-servile enlistment of Hessians and
Hanoverians was used to fight the efforts of our American colonies for
political freedom. But this policy, if policy it is, depends on
whether and when Germany is sufficiently recovered to work again.

When we measure the exhaustion of Germany on the one side against the
enormity of its burdens on the other, it is difficult to believe that
it can ever recover in the near future. German economic life has had
to endure three crushing blows--the war, the revolution, and the
peace. It was financially ruined by the war, industrially ruined by
the revolution, and economically ruined by the peace terms. Little
need be said as to the financial ruin caused by the war. In its
general lines it is the same as that suffered by all belligerent
peoples; in its details it would require a book to itself. War losses
reduced the industrial, agricultural, and mental producing power of
the male population by about a fifth, which may well be doubled to
cover the reduced productivity of the remainder due to physical anæmia
and political agitation. The productivity of the soil was reduced by
over a quarter, owing to want of labour and fertilisers. Livestock was
reduced by two-thirds. Deadstock, including industrial plant, railway
rolling stock, shipping, buildings, etc., was all much more reduced in
value than with us, owing to the greater material concentration of
Germany on its war effort. The State was bankrupt even in the opinion
of the most optimistic. But all this was remediable, even rapidly
remediable, as soon as the people recovered their vitality. And then
came the armistice which for nine months blockaded and bled the
patient. If one were to enquire which of the particular bleedings most
contributed to his relapse into his present condition of coma one
would choose the taking away of the 5,000 locomotives. The tie up of
internal transportation that followed did more than anything else to
injure the economic vitality of the country.

German unity was economic rather than political in its origin and
dates from the Zollverein and the railway system. Germany was made a
nation economically by railway construction in the '`forties'; though,
unfortunately, the attempt to realise this unity politically on a
liberal basis, in 1848, failed. Even in the present Constitution, we
can recognise the degree to which the railways are relied on for
binding the country together across the mediæval barriers of
provincial frontiers. It was to some extent realisation of its
political importance that made the German railway system the pride of
the country; and it was the manner in which this system met the
extraordinary demands of modern warfare that enabled Germany to
exploit strategically to the full its internal position and fight a
war on four fronts. And now the condition of the railways is a
striking illustration of the economic and political conditions of the
country.

Here is an account of a journey from Berlin to Munich undertaken last
Easter.

In peace time, if you wanted to go to Munich from Berlin there were
half a dozen trains daily which did the journey in seven or eight
hours, and provided reading cars, eating cars, and sleeping cars at a
rate no more than an English third-class fare. Even after the war one
train daily only took eighteen hours, and the second-class carriages,
though very crowded, were comfortable enough. So, when I was warned
that if I wanted to see the Russian Communist _régime_ in Munich at
work I must lose no time, it seemed worth spending Easter week
examining whether Russian Bolshevism can take root in Germany. As a
matter of fact, I got just twenty-four hours in Munich, the rest of
the week going in travelling.

The first difficulty was a strike of bank clerks, so that I had to
leave short of money. The next was that owing to the coal strike all
passenger trains in Saxony had stopped running, and the only route
open was round by Frankfort. The Spa night express was, of course,
running; a long train of sleepers for the Allied officers and official
or officious personages, and a few ordinary carriages. Thanks to some
British Tommies, for whom a first-class carriage was reserved, failing
to turn up, I got a seat, and so comfortably enough to Cassel about
dawn. There I found that the suspension of passenger traffic had been
extended, and that a hundred miles of dead country lay between me and
Würtemberg, where trains still ran. Fortunately, a party of prisoners
from England were being sent south on a goods train, and I got leave
from the Red Guard to join them. The station officials objected
strongly, but the prisoners, some of whom had been reading _The Daily
News_, overruled them.

And so, bumping slowly along on a wooden bench all day, discussing,
cooking and card-playing with the prisoners, past stations with names
reminiscent of pre-war high living. Leaving the goods yard at
Frankfort about ten that night, I was lucky enough to run across a
motor-bus just starting for Darmstadt, in Würtemberg, and got there
about one in the morning with a jolly party of South Germans. Three
hours on a waiting-room bench, and then at dawn on Easter Monday a
train south into Baden, and then from Heidelberg east through
Würtemberg.

All this country seemed to have suffered little from the war and to be
wonderfully happy and prosperous. The change came again in the
afternoon after crossing the Bavarian frontier and climbing slowly up
on to the Swabian plateau. Down in Baden it was full spring, with
fruit trees in bloom and warm sunshine. Here was winter, a bitter east
wind and snow flurries, bare uplands and dark pine woods.

After passing Ulm were the first signs of the winter of discontent,
some telegraph poles sawn through. And finally, just when a bed at
Augsburg after two nights up seemed assured, we were all turned out
about eleven at night at a miserable Swabian village called
Dinckelscherben. There was fighting in Augsburg and all access to the
town was barred by the Würtemberg troops there.

It was freezing hard, with a bitter wind, and I joined a forlorn party
of some score travellers who wandered about knocking vainly at the
doors of the big farms that made up the village--no Swabian farmer
opens to a stranger at midnight these days. The only beerhouse was
packed two deep with travellers from an earlier train, but took in the
women on our threatening to storm it. The rest started off to tramp
the rails to Augsburg, seventeen miles away; but as this meant
abandoning my provisions I broke into a hayloft and bested the rude
Swabian boor. The bauer by daylight was somewhat less of a Swab and
gave me milk for my porridge, the first I had had for three months. He
also produced at a price a queer little shay, with a half-broken
Ukrainian, swerving erratically about beside a long pole, in which I
drove over the plateau to Augsburg, getting there about noon.

Coming in to Oberhausen, the workmen's quarter, there were all the
usual signs of trouble--deserted streets, bullet-starred walls, and
broken windows. The street was blocked by a crowd that was being
addressed by a speaker, from a window. The shay was surrounded by men
armed with rifles and bombs; and half-starved Bavarian workmen,
without sleep for days and fighting against odds, made an ugly looking
crowd. They were not at first satisfied with my papers; said they, "If
you are an English _genosse_ make us a speech and if it's all right
we'll let you through, if not--" It was a severer _viva voce_ than I'd
had for the Diplomatic Service, but I passed, and some of the elder
men escorted the shay through the lines for fear of accidents. They
promised not to draw fire from the Government machine-guns until we
were across and the Würtemberg outpost was safely reached.

That afternoon was spent in Augsburg, the base of the Würtemberg
Expeditionary Force, and the next stage was the fifty miles of road to
Munich. No motor would go for fear of being confiscated by the
Communists, and in all Augsburg there was only one fly with a pair of
horses that could do it. It asked £20 for the round trip, about four
times what I had with me. However, having bought an option on the fly,
I had a monopoly of the transport to Munich, and had only to float a
company. A merchant, an officer in mufti, probably a spy, and a
charming lady in the dress of the Red Cross took the other three seats
at £5 each, and I had still the seats for the return journey. These
eventually brought a handsome profit that I divided between the
Anti-Bolshevist League and the Communist Party.

These negotiations, and finding out what was happening in Augsburg,
took the afternoon, and at dawn next morning we started over the
rolling uplands for Munich. Outside Bruck we came on a score or so of
Red Guards bivouacking in a barn, and nearer Munich passed through
several pickets which searched for weapons, but gave no trouble. And
so about two in the afternoon of Wednesday into Munich, having left
Berlin Saturday evening.

The return journey was better. I had intended to leave Munich by the
carriage for Augsburg on Friday, but on Thursday afternoon I heard the
two parties had agreed to let a special train run for Munich merchants
exhibiting at the Leipzig Fair. Having done nearly all that I came
for, this chance was not to be missed. So I paid Levien, the Communist
Commissioner, a farewell visit, and got a special permit from him to
go by the Leipzig train. Leaving Munich about four with a train load
of Munich merchants and their assistants, we went very slowly round by
Landshut to Nuremberg, with nothing more sensational than searches for
arms first by Red then by White Guards. The special arrived at
Nuremberg about dawn, and was to wait six hours there; so finding a
train was leaving for Bamberg, the seat of the Hoffmann Government, I
went on there, and spent the morning in the picturesque old town, then
the "Weimar" of Bavaria. Like Weimar, the station was barricaded, and
a pass was required to enter the town. Like Weimar, the town was worth
entering, for food was plentiful.

Having seen the Premier, I got back to pick up the Leipzig special.
But the railway officials had other views, and there was no Red Guard
to overrule them. My Communist permit was useless, and there was no
time to get one from the Bamberg Government. So I had to see the
special steam out. This might have meant a day's delay, as Bavarian
passenger traffic was by now also suspended, the Bohemian coal having
been cut off. I was lucky in getting on in a wooden box hitched on to
a regular dachshund of a goods train, it was so long and slow. It
crawled gasping up into the Thuringer Wald, and there after dark ten
miles from anywhere lay down with no sign of life but an occasional
sigh. After some hours a Prussian engine came down, and pulled it over
the ridge, and we got clear of Bavaria at Probstcella about midnight.

Here there was a great row between the Prussian and Bavarian
railwaymen. The Prussians complaining the Bavarians kept them up to
all hours by being always late and the Bavarians saying it was the bad
coal the Prussians sent them. Our small party, headed by some Bavarian
officers, profited, because we backed the Bavarians, who in return
insisted on our being taken on with the train. Behind the Prussian
engine we developed a surprising turn of speed, and rattled along
expecting at every station to be turned out or shunted until we got
into the main line at Halle. A judicious change at a way station into
a passenger train that overtook us, and three hours' standing up in a
carriage with fourteen people, a large dog, two goats, and a baby,
brought me to Berlin about two on Saturday afternoon.

Nor was this a unique experience. On my last journey home the
locomotive broke down and had to be changed three times before we got
to Hanover.

A German train with its immense but impotent engine, its ponderous but
dilapidated carriages, its officials once resplendent and arrogant,
now servile and seedy, its groaning crawl from one breakdown to
another, is a painful picture of the German State.

And the financial position of the State railways is illustrative of
the condition of State finances. Before the war the Prussian State
Railways contributed to the budget a surplus of 600 million marks--now
they show a deficit of 2,000 millions.

In the intervals between the crisis of its internal convulsions
Germany worries feebly about its finances, much as a merchant in
mortal illness may worry about his bankruptcy. But, of course, nothing
has been done or could be done because the business was still closed
and the chief creditor had not yet filed his claim. Now we know what
Paris expects Germany to pay, and we also know something of the
financial position from the statements of the Finance Ministers,
Schiffer, Dernburg, and Erzberger.

The German debt before the war was an annual charge of 230 million
marks, the peace expenditure excluding the army 200 millions. The war
debt in December, 1918, was 146 milliards, increased in January by 3.5
milliards, in February by 2.7 milliards, in March by 2 milliards and
estimated to increase further by 1-½ milliards per month on an average
for the coming financial year. To this must be added ½ milliard for
cost of expropriations, 4-½ milliards for reconstruction of ravaged
territories in Prussia, 1-½ milliards for compensation of German
shipowners, separation allowance subsidies to the German States,
etc., in all 185 milliards about, with an annual charge of 10
milliards. Reduction of this item by total or partial repudiation of
this debt, though advocated by the Opposition, is impossible without
causing economic ruin and political revolution. The new army is
estimated to require 2 milliards; about the same as before the war,
because of the enormously exaggerated expense of this small volunteer
force compared with the old conscript army. If, to the great political
advantage of Germany, a Swiss militia were substituted for the
Frei-Corps, this item could be halved easily. The estimate of 4-½
milliards for pensions is the same as that of France and will probably
be exceeded, though as yet less than half that is being paid. This
makes up a total annual estimated expenditure of 17,429 million marks,
the mark at pre-war exchange being equal to a shilling.

As Herr Erzberger's speech on the Budget showed, he is faced by a
financial position unparalleled in the history of national
bankruptcies. The interest which he has to find on the Imperial debt
amounts by itself to Mk. 10 milliard; and his total annual
requirements, exclusive of the Allies' demands under the Peace Treaty,
are estimated at Mk. 25 milliard. Before the war the revenue from
Imperial taxation was under Mk. 2 milliard. Additional taxation
imposed during the war yields about Mk. 4 milliard. To-day therefore
Germany is faced with an annual expenditure of Mk. 25 milliard and an
annual revenue of Mk. 6 milliard--_i.e._, an annual deficit of Mk. 19
milliard, nearly ten times greater than the whole revenue of 1913. The
new taxes actually proposed are estimated to bring in about Mk. 2
milliard. But the main sources upon which the Finance Minister is
going to rely are two: a levy on capital and a tax on sales. The levy
establishes a graded tax on all property, starting at 10 per cent. and
reaching a maximum of 63.9 per cent. Payment may be made by
instalments spread over 30 years, and it is estimated that the tax
will bring in about Mk. 4 milliard annually. The tax on sales is still
more drastic. It really consists of three different taxes: (1) a
general tax of 1 per cent. on all sales, (2) a tax of 5 per cent. on
retail trade, (3) a tax on the producer of luxuries of 10 per cent.,
and on retail trade in luxuries of 15 per cent. This tax is estimated
to bring in about Mk. 3 milliard. But even after this raid on the
owners of property and upon capital, the unfortunate Minister of
Finance is faced with a deficit of Mk. 10 milliard. He proposes to
get Mk. 2-½ milliard out of beer, petroleum, stamps, flour and meat,
and the remainder, Mk. 7-½ milliard out of a uniform income tax for
the whole country and an excess profits tax.

The magnitude of these sums can be estimated when it is remembered
that the total incomes of all Prussians earning more than a pound a
week only amounts to 19 milliards, and that Helfferich's estimate of
the pre-war income of all Germany was 315 milliards. But that was a
very different Germany from the present. Germany has lost a greater
part of its mineral wealth, the coal of the Saar, the potash of
Alsace, the ores of Luxembourg. She has lost her colonies with their
great potential wealth. She has also lost her fleet and a great part
of her railway material. Over a million and a-half, or 16 per cent. of
the male working population are dead. Industry has neither the capital
nor the energy to reconvert itself to peace productivity. Much of the
capital left is either concealed or has been carried abroad. German
holdings of foreign securities were estimated at twenty milliards
before the war and not more than one milliard now. Over a milliard of
the gold reserve at the Deutsche Bank has been paid for foreign
provisions, leaving only a milliard and a-half to cover a note issue
of thirty milliards.

Germany must by March, 1921, deliver up all payment in kind, _i.e._,
goods, ships, coal, etc., which might possibly exceed the total of
£800,000,000 provided by the Treaty. On the other hand, Germany must
pay the pensions due to disabled soldiers and the relatives of the
fallen, which in the case of France alone amounted to £8,000,000,000.
In all, Germany is liable for a sum of £15,400,000,000, which should
be paid off in a period of thirty-six years. For the two first years
after the war she will pay nothing, but subsequently she must pay
£554,000,000, with interest at 5 per cent. The total amount paid by
Germany will therefore amount to £18,520,000,000 at the end of
thirty-six years.

And most serious loss of all--she has lost for a time, anyway, all
will to work. Improvement in food and general conditions of life will
do something for this, socialisation of industry and introduction of
the Council system would do more, but it will take time. Even if
Germany obtained at once a return of energy, a reopening of markets, a
re-entry of raw material and a free recourse to foreign capital, and
she will have to wait long for all of these, even so it seems very
doubtful whether she could make a living under such a load of debt.
This will mean the emigration of from ten to twenty million Germans in
the course of the next few years, to the West if it is open to them,
but otherwise to the East. Germany will, in fact, be brought down to
the political and economic conditions of Portugal.

We pursued this policy of ruining Germany for a century because we
were still under the impression of animosities and anxieties that
belonged to war conditions. Our attitude was that the Allies should
get what they could out of Germany while they could; and if the
attempt ruined Germany, Germany had deserved it.

This was the attitude that prevailed during the armistice period. But
the Peace of Versailles has inaugurated a more systematic and
far-reaching exploitation. This is no place to review its economic and
financial provisions; but no one could read them without realising
that our policy is apparently to make Germany work for us as its
bankers, brokers, shippers and creditors with unlimited claims. To
take a rake-off as merchants and middlemen from all German
manufactures and to set up a receivership over Germany that we call a
Reparation Commission, with the right to claim any remaining profit.
The powers of this receivership are such as to prevent the development
of any German competition with us in the conduct or control of German
production. Combined with the claims for damages these powers would,
indeed, make all government impossible. For example, under them
Germany is liable to pay the pension claims of the dependents of
Sikhs, Senegalese or South Carolina negroes to the exclusion of its
own wounded and widows. But the policy, in so far as a compilation of
the unchecked schedules and uncriticised schemes of war profiteers can
be said to have a policy, is that of making the German workmen produce
for British Big Business. The functions ascribed to the so-called
"Reparation Commission" represent an attempt to make the German
proletariat work under foreign exploitation. Experiments in foreign
financial control we have had in Eastern Europe, with semi-civilised
peoples; but this is an attempt to set up foreign economic control
over a people which in industry had won for itself the first place in
Europe. At first sight one is inclined to reject this policy as a
practical impossibility; but so extreme is the debility of Germany,
and so exceptional the docility of the people, that I am inclined to
think it might have had some temporary and partial success but for one
thing--the Council movement and the demands of the workmen for the
socialisation of industry.

Without some measure of socialisation of industry, without some
measure of political representation through Councils, the unemployed
will not return to work and the employed will only work in fitful
intervals between strikes.

Between the November revolution and the end of February the coalminers
alone forfeited 23 million marks of wages in more or less meaningless
strikes; and this was before the great strikes of the spring, which
had an obvious political purpose. This is three times the loss
incurred in the last pre-war strike of 1912. The decrease in
production rose from a quarter-million tons in December to a million
in February, and this was little compared with the loss that followed,
estimated at no less than ten million tons.

During the first six months of 1919 there were always at least a
million and a half workmen drawing an unemployment pay of about
two-thirds of their average wage.[D] Add to this outlay that of the
force raised to prevent the workmen from realising their
revolution--the seven hundred thousand Frei-Corps, engaged at such a
high pay that this Prussian volunteer force of to-day is budgeted for
at the same total as the vast German armies that dominated Europe
before the war. It is curious that Germany should now be paying the
same amount to terrorise a few working quarters that it paid five
years ago to terrorise the world. And the second attempt is as
hopeless as the first, for the revolution will not be denied. Even the
bureaucratic Social-Democrats of the present Government recognise this
and try to placate it with words.

"Socialisation has come," proclaim the Government posters all over
Berlin, and when I was in Berlin I thought I'd see if I could find it.
First, I went to the special department responsible, where in a
commandeered hotel I was introduced by a charming lady typist to an
equally charming temporary official. He was an enthusiastic alpinist,
and asked affectionately after my brother and other English climbers;
and, finally, with the help of the typist we unearthed some pamphlets
and propaganda leaflets. It was quite a shock on leaving to find
oneself in the Wilhelmstrasse, not in Whitehall. Then I tried
Westminster--I mean Weimar--where I found two Government Bills being
shoved through in a great hurry, because the Socialist supporters of
the Government had, like me, been investigating what was behind the
posters and pamphlets, and had found only brick walls and bureaucrats.

And to what does it all amount? Practically nothing, except as regards
the coal industry, and so far rather less than nothing there. But the
course of events is instructive and particularly interesting for us.

The German coal industry, even more than ours, has in the last
quarter-century become a monopoly under control of great capitalist
combines. Their power is not affected either by the State-owned
Prussian mines or by any possibility of new coalfields, as these are
either held in reserve by the combines or are too unremunerative to
compete. Already before the war this monopoly had been recognised by
all parties as not in the public interest; but "nationalisation" in
the sense of State exploitation was prejudiced by the poor results
given by the State-owned properties of the Saar fields.

This inferiority was due not to inferior industry on the part of the
workmen but to inferior initiative and independence in the management.
What effect over-papered, under-paid officialdom can have on the
productiveness of a coalfield is shown in the following annual
percentages of total production:

            Westphalia.    Silesia.    Saar.
  Year.      Private.      Private.    State.
  1860         26.6         24.7        19.5
  1880         53.0         23.8        12.6
  1890         55.2         26.2         9.4
  1910         59.9         24.4         9.3
  1913         60.2         22.8         8.9

But with the revolution came an alternative to
"nationalisation"--"socialisation"--in which all those connected with
the coal industry should have an interest in it. An autonomous guild
might preserve initiative and energy; while the interest of the
consumer and of the community might be safeguarded by representation
in the Guild and by State supervision.

A beginning was made towards such a solution in regulations, passed in
the first months of the revolution, recognising the functions of the
Workmen's Councils and attempting to reconcile their activities with
expert administration and official supervision. No progress was,
however, made by Weimar during the spring in this practical process of
working through a sort of Whitley Council system to a sort of Guild
Socialism; and the general strike of March found the Government with
nothing in particular to which it could refer its critics.

Accordingly two Acts were hurriedly run through the Assembly. One, the
"Socialisation Bill," recorded the right of the citizen to employment
or to support (amended to reserve "personal liberty")--the right of
the State to socialise all economic enterprises (restricted by
amendment to cases of urgent necessity and adequate compensation)--the
administration of socialised industries by autonomous guilds--(amended
to include the State or other Government authorities). And from this
it will be seen that an Act intended to establish general
"socialisation" in principle, on a basis of expropriation was amended
into one contemplating "nationalisation" in urgent cases, with
compensation.

A clause in this Act required immediate application of the principle
of socialisation to coal mines, and a Coal Bill has accordingly also
been passed. By this the State takes over the industry and entrusts it
to a Coal Board, reserving the right to regulate prices. Nothing is
said as to the composition of this Board, but nothing is changed in
the proprietary basis of the industry further than its organisation in
regional syndicates.

There is also to be an Expert Council, representing employers,
workmen, and officials equally. The retail coal trade remains
untouched.

As to "Socialisation" generally, the reports of the Socialisation
Commission have all been rejected and the Commission, that last relic
of the revolution, resigned as long ago as May. The recommendations of
Wissels, an active Minister, had as little success and he resigned in
June.

The Government had promised that socialisation was to be established
in the Constitution; but Art. 156 of the Constitution does no more
than give the State the power to "socialise" and syndicalise industry,
while Art. 155 says that private royalties are to be legislatively
transferred to the State.

Therefore, in spite of plaintive posters, it is not communistic
socialisation, but capitalistic syndicalisation, that has been
introduced in Germany. While loudly proclaiming a step forward, the
Government has taken a long stride back.[E]

"Socialisation" has not as yet affected the economic basis of the
Prussianism that we have been fighting. This basis was a coalition
between the old political interest of the landed proprietors and the
new political interest of the captains of industry, or, to express it
shortly, between the Junkers and the Jews. The free trade and
liberalism that kept Great Britain from "Prussianism" in spite of the
power retained by a few feudal families and the landed gentry was due
to the different relationship in England between the upper and middle
classes. In England our "Junkers" and "Jews" coalesced during our
great industrial development, perhaps because our upper class had
already more Jews than Junkers. In Germany they remained apart but
combined for their own interests. We have seen to what extent the
revolution has threatened the economic authority of the captain of
industry--the industrial profiteer. Is the feudal landed proprietor
also threatened?

The first effort of the revolution further east in Russia, Hungary and
the Baltic States has been to "socialise" land. Either, where the
agricultural industry is primitive, as in Russia, by simply dividing
up the land among the peasants, or where it is progressive, as in the
model-farm estates of Hungary, by putting the estate under control of
a council of workers as though it was a factory. But in Germany the
urban character of the revolution, which has accounted for the
comparative ease with which the Government have coerced it, is shown
by land tenure being as yet little affected. The only definite action
against the large landed estates, that I know of, is a measure of the
Prussian Assembly postponing action until 1921. This characteristic
procrastination is, of course, explained to the revolutionaries as
merely allowing a short period for voluntary breaking up of the big
estates, and to the reactionaries as a postponement of all action.
Meantime financial conditions in Germany are quite as favourable to
the dispersal of large estates as with us; for wherever the farming
system obtains the farmers have made even larger fortunes in Germany
than in England. But the system of landed tenure is much more varied
in Germany. There is a large proportion of freeholders and
copyholders, while big estates are farmed by bailiffs with hired
labourers.

In the region of these big estates--the land of the Junker
(Mecklenburg, Pomerania and Brandenburg)--the revolution is openly
defied. The agrarians of these regions not long ago had a regular
trial of strength with the present _régime_, and though worsted were
none the worse.

The strength of the German revolution is in labour, its weakness is in
the land.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] To end of 1918.

[C] The advertisement columns of the daily papers, those most
trustworthy of documents, told many a tale of distress. Here is one such
advertisement:--

"Valuable violin--Antonius Stradivarius Cremonentis, authentic, will
exchange for provisions: meat, sugar preferred."

But it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and if it blows away the
family heirloom it blows off the mortgage on the family property:--

"Summer holidays in peace and plenty. Farmhouse in Harz mountains will
receive family and provide them with farm produce, milk, butter, eggs,
etc., in return for redemption of mortgage of 10,000 marks."

[D] The following percentages of unemployment during and after the war
may be of interest:--

           Average
  Month.    1908-    1914.    1915.    1916.    1917.    1918.
             1913.
  Jan.       3.1      4.7      6.5      2.6      1.7      0.9
  Feb.       2.8      3.7      5.1      2.8      1.6      0.8
  March      2.3      2.8      3.3      2.2      1.3      0.9
  April      2.2      2.8      2.9      2.3      1.0      0.8
  May        2.3      2.8      2.9      2.5      1.0      0.8
  June       2.3      2.5      2.5      2.5      0.9      0.8
  July       2.2      2.9      2.7      2.4      0.8      0.7
  Aug.       2.2     22.4      2.6      2.2      0.8      0.7
  Sept.      2.1     15.7      2.6      2.1      0.8      0.8
  Oct.       2.1     10.9      2.5      2.0      0.7      0.7
  Nov.       2.2      8.2      2.5      1.7      0.7      1.8
  Dec.       3.2      7.2      2.6      1.6      0.9      5.4


[E] To do justice to the German revolution I annex a schedule of
measures passed by the Peoples Commissaries before the Weimar Parliament
met and reaction set in. How far these are being at present enforced I
do not know.

Unemployment provision--regulations of 13th November and 15th January.
The cost is borne one-half by the Reich, one-third by the State and
one-sixth by the locality. The rates must be reduced by April, 1919, to
a maximum of six marks per day. It can be withdrawn on refusal to work
for insufficient reasons.

Employment regulations of 4th and 25th January. Previous employés on
demobilisation must be re-employed and persons employed in their absence
only discharged under certain conditions.

Legislative regulations of labour. An order of 12th November, 1918,
restored to force all sanitary and social regulations and restrictions
suspended during the war.

Labour disputes. Settlement regulated by order of 23rd December, 1918,
which sets up workmen's committees responsible for questions of wages,
etc.

Prohibition of night baking, 23rd November, 1918.

Prevention of venereal diseases, 11th and 17th December. This measure
penalises with three years' imprisonment those exposing others to
infection even ignorantly and prescribes compulsory medical attendance.




CHAPTER V

COUNCIL GOVERNMENT


From its present position and at its present pace the Weimar
Parliament will never overtake events. I remember once as a boy
pointing out to a cavalcade in red coats jogging along a by-lane that
the hunt was off in a different direction.

"The hounds, you mean," said an old gentleman severely; "we are the
hunt," and they all jogged happily on.

Meantime the dogs of war--of civil war between the constitutional and
council movements, between Conservatives and Communists--are still
running at a fearful pace and quite out of hand. The workmen will not
work unless some real socialisation is introduced, and this is only
possible if more steam be brought into the political machine than the
parliamentary system can raise. Socialisation and reconstruction have
been going back, not forward. The Socialisation Commission and the
responsible Minister have both resigned, because Weimar would not
give effect to their mildly socialistic recommendations. Yet nothing
can save Germany from bankruptcy and Bolshevism but a re-energising
and reorganising of the people for peace at least as effective as that
they underwent in the war. Nothing can do this but a new ideal and new
institutions. And the ideal of direct political power for the workmen
and the institution of an industrial councils system is, so, far as I
can see, alone capable of drawing out such force as is still left and
of driving the country through the slough of war weariness and waste.

The Councils movement in Germany, at first, followed much the same
course at much the same pace as it did in Russia. In Germany, as in
Russia, the Councils, after reaching at a bound the sole power during
the days of revolution, relapsed under a re-assertion of Parliamentary
and Party government; then recovered, and, in the case of Russia,
realised the second revolution. The German movement was last spring
(1919) in the early stage of recovery. Its development is of special
interest to us, in that eventually the German movement will probably
take a middle place between the Russian and our own.

Before the revolution the Labour movement in Germany was very much in
the same condition as with us. The attempt to combine on a patriotic
platform all productive forces, and to concentrate Capital and Labour
on winning the war, had only superficially smoothed over the distrust
between Employers, Associations and Labour organisations, or the
dissension between heads of unions and the bodies of workers. When the
revolution broke out on November 9th it was carried through first by
committees of sailors, then of soldiers, and finally of workmen, that
sprang up simultaneously and assumed supreme authority. The advent of
this new authority, however, brought about an alliance between the
previous authorities thus put on one side, the Employers' Associations
and the Trades Unions.

The employers, who had hitherto been resisting claims for an
eight-hour day and a share in control, found themselves threatened
with expropriation. Under the leadership of a Captain of Industry,
Hugo Stinnes, they at once opened negotiations with the Unions led by
Legien; and by November 15th reached agreement on the eight-hour day
and the establishment of Labour Associations (_Arbeitsgemeinschaften_)
equivalent to our Whitley Councils, and Labour Chambers
(_Arbeitskammern_), for dealing with wages and welfare, in which
employers and employed would have equal representation.

As Dr. Reichert, spokesman for the metal industries, has pointed out
to his supporters, these concessions looked more than they were. For
the eight-hour day would have to be abandoned unless, as was unlikely,
it became general in Europe; and as to the associations, it should
always be possible to get in and bring over a "Christian"
representative of one of the Labour organisations under the influence
of the Catholic Centrum. It is this agreement, none the less, between
the Trust and Trade Union bosses that is the basis of the present
Coalition Government's Labour policy, and that is embodied in the new
Constitution.

But, since the revolution, the real Labour movement of Germany has
passed to the "Councils" (_Räte_), as we must call them for want of a
better word. For "moot" is too archaic and "committee" suggests either
a party of bores and busybodies or a _posse_ of Bulgarian brigands;
while Soviet, which is only the Russian for Council, would mean
branding the movement as "Bolshevist."

Of these Councils then, the three main divisions in Germany are
Workmen's Councils (_Arbeiterräte_), or Industrial Councils
(_Betriebsräte_), Soldiers' Councils, and Communal Councils. Of these,
the first only seem to have a constitutional future in Germany.

The Communal Councils have not yet been fully admitted to the Council
system, and seem to have but little vitality.

The Soldiers' Councils, which played the more prominent part in the
revolution, and still form part of the organisation, have not
succeeded in making headway against the efforts of the Government to
demobilise them. Thus a regulation of January 19th reduced them to
welfare committees and restricted their right of deposing officers to
a mere recommendation. Attempts of the more revolutionary corps to
resist authority in December, January and March were put down by the
Frei-Corps with excessive and progressive severity; and the large
bodies of revolutionary troops that survived the demobilisation, as
"Republican Guards," "Public Safety Guards," "People's Naval
Division," &c., &c., have been gradually dispersed by the Government's
Frei-Corps.[F] So that the Soldiers' Councils as the political organ
of the revolutionary fighting forces are losing their importance. Now
that the British Admiralty have recognised "welfare committees" in the
Navy, it is safe to assert that the Council movement in Germany so far
as concerns the armed forces is no longer in advance of ours.

Returning, therefore, to the Industrial Councils, we find that in the
early days of the revolution the movement spontaneously developed an
organisation consisting of a national Central Council, elected by a
national Congress of Councils, in its turn elected by local Executive
Councils. These were all political institutions, which for a few days
enjoyed entire political power. This power passed back to the old
political Parties and Parliamentary system, owing to the Council
accepting as "Commissaries of the People" Parliamentary politicians,
whose sole idea and secret intention it was to reconstitute a Cabinet
and reconstruct a Chamber on reformed but not revolutionary lines. The
capital error was in trying to realise the revolution by only
establishing revolutionary bodies--the Councils--in supervision of,
instead of in substitution for, politicians and officials of the old
_régime_. This was the cause of the relapse into reaction.

The real revolutionaries realised this mistake and Liebknecht, after
accepting office, withdrew and joined the Communists and
"Spartacists." The Communists were and are, of course, "whole-hoggers"
in the Council movement, whose war cries are, "All power to the
Soviets" and "Down with the Assembly." The Independents ranged from
men like Ledebour, Däumig and Richard Müller, who saw in the Councils
the salvation, not only of the revolution, but of civilisation, to men
like Haase, Cohn and Breitscheidt, who believed that Parliamentary
democracy and proletarian dictatorship could be co-ordinated. The
Social-Democrats ranged from members of the Council organisation, who
believed that the Councils should have economic functions, and who
were last summer coming over to the Independents, down to men like
Legien, who would abolish the Councils as a revolt against the Trade
Unions, or Noske, who would abolish them as rebels against authority.
The Democrats included intellectuals, who recognised the political
utility of the Councils, but consisted mostly of Liberals with no
appreciation for them: though many of these latter had been coming
over to the idea, as, for instance, the veteran economist, Brentano,
or the internationalist, Schucking.

Owing to a tactical blunder of the Independents, the Central Council,
as well as the Cabinet of Commissaries, came under the sole control of
the Social-Democrats, the Trade Unions, and Moderate Socialists.
Consequently, the Central Council, instead of being the citadel of the
Council system, became a salient from which the enemies of the system
could undermine its whole position.

The Central Council, pursuing the Government's policy that all power
in the hands of revolutionary authorities must be surrendered to the
parliamentary institutions, in February publicly and formally
recommitted its mandate, whatever that might be, to the Assembly. One
might have supposed that this solemn suicide of its central authority
would have been the end of the Council movement. But exactly the same
surrender of the Central Council occurred at a similar stage of the
Russian revolution, with the result, not that the movement collapsed,
but that control of it passed from the Socialists to the Communists.
This seems likely to be the result in Germany. The first consequence
of the abdication of the Central Council was that leadership passed to
the Executive Council of Berlin, where the Independents and Communists
were already in a majority. The Executive Council proceeded to press
for a convocation of the Congress of Councils, and thereby a
re-election of the Central Council. The latter procrastinated, but
gave way on the Executive Council threatening to convene the Congress
itself, but even then succeeded in having it postponed more than
once.

Now, while the Opposition was moving to the Left in attempts to
realise the revolution, the Government was moving to the Right, and
rapidly restoring the old Police-State behind a façade of
parliamentary institutions. The consequence was a growing
dissatisfaction with the Government, which, for want of proper
expression through the Council organisation, broke out in periodic
strikes and street fights. These were exploited by the Government as
excuses for repressive and reactionary measures, which all contributed
to reinforcing the Council movement. It was the vicious circle that we
in England have come perilously near more than once.

The defection of the Central Council also resulted in depriving the
whole Council movement of any stability and solidarity, and drove it
into local offensives or "_putsches_," which were beaten in detail.
First Bremen and the coast ports, then Dusseldorf and the coal area,
next Saxony and the industrial districts, and finally, in the first
week of March, Berlin itself, all declared general strikes in which
recognition of the Council system was the principal demand. And the
Berlin strike, following close on that of Saxony, did frighten the
Government into what might have been a considerable concession.

As late as the end of February the Government had declared
semi-officially that no member of the Government had the slightest
intention of having the Council system incorporated in the
Constitution either legislatively or administratively; but two days
after the outbreak of the Berlin strike, early in March, the
Government announced, not only the socialisation of mines but the
sanction of the Council system in the Constitution.

The first Government scheme for organising the Councils was of much
the same character as the socialisation that it promised at the same
time--an elaborate organisation of Factory Councils, Industrial
Councils and Labour Chambers with "economic functions"; which all
boiled down to little more than the "Whitley Council" principle
previously proposed and rejected by the workmen. Since then the
Government has had to concede more, and Art. 165 of the Constitution
as signed in August, recognises the Workmen's Councils without
representation of the employers, though they have to associate
themselves with employers' representatives in order to discharge their
constitutional functions. Thus associated they can intervene in social
and economic legislation through a Central Economic Council. But it
was clear that neither this nor any other concession likely to be made
by the Assembly would satisfy the workmen. A bi-cameral system might
have done so, but this the Coalition Government could never have
imposed on its Centrum and middle-class supporters.

The best chance of arriving at a compromise between Parliamentary and
Council government was through the Congress of Councils which at last
met in Berlin in May.

This Congress had also another function of the first importance. It
afforded the only gauge available as to the velocity and volume of the
revolutionary revival. The Assembly at Weimar was in this, as in most
respects, useless. The Press was so coloured by class and party
feeling as to be quite unreliable. While owing to general
disorganisation of the country and the disintegrated nature of the
revolutionary movement the leaders of it themselves did not know what
their forces were. All that was known was that there had been a steady
defection from the Majority Socialists supporting the Government and
the Parliamentary system to the Independents, in opposition, who
advocated a combination of Parliament and Councils; and from the
Independents to the Communists, who were for "all power to the
Councils."

So steady had this leftward flow been that probably the Congress, if
left to itself, would have reflected it by coming together with a
majority for the Opposition. It would then have been able to begin at
once its function of elaborating a suitable compromise between
Parliament and Councils. For it is to be assumed that the Communists
and the right Majoritarians would have been each in a small minority,
with an absolute majority for delegates representing the Independent
position. That this was, at the time, the prevalent opinion in the
movement is suggested by the delegates from German-Austria associating
themselves with the Independents.

However, partly for the better preservation of party, power, and
place, partly from the pressure of constant "officious" admonitions
from us that peace would only be made with a parliamentary government,
the German Government did their best to falsify the character of the
Congress and get as many Majority Socialists into it as possible by
hook or crook. The hook used was a new electoral arrangement prepared
by the Central Council which most of the great towns rejected. In
some, as in Breslau, the delegates first elected were recalled, and
real workmen's representatives substituted. And when the Government
found its lost sheep weren't coming home, like Bo-peep, it took its
little crook, determined for to find them; and found them indeed, but
with the historical result. For if by hook and by crook you make
workmen's delegates of country lawyers or country magistrates you
cannot expect them to bring much of a working-class tail behind them.
So when the Council came together it was distinctly rather
parliamentarian than proletarian in its character. But if the
Government's object was to cripple and control the Congress it failed.
Because the first result of their gerrymandering was that the
Communists refused to take part, thereby greatly facilitating the
subsequent _rapprochement_ between the two Socialist factions, the
Majority and the Independents.

The Congress, when it met, was found to consist of 130 Majority
Socialists, 64 Independents, 20 soldiers' representatives, and about
80 miscellaneous and absent; and of these quite a large number were
not working men at all. But all the same the difference between the
atmosphere of Parliamentary and Council government at once appeared
when it got to work. For this much gerrymandered and very jerry-built
Congress showed itself capable of adapting itself to pressures in a
way that the National Assembly could not. It showed itself to be a
real deliberative body, capable of coming rapidly to a joint decision
radically different from the several views subscribed by its
individual members before its meeting. In other words, the Congress
had vitality enough to make its constituents real representatives
instead of merely instructed delegates. Its response to the general
trend of opinion to the Left and against "Government by the
Frei-Corps" was shown by its first vote which, by 199 to 81 called for
the release of Ledebour, an Independent "intellectual" imprisoned for
alleged complicity in the January disorders. This was followed by a
vote of congratulation to Hungary; while a similar congratulation to
Bavaria, where a "Council Republic" had just been proclaimed, was very
properly postponed as prejudging the whole question of Council
government that was before the Congress.

The first days were passed in general debate, during which much
negotiation between section leaders and a general alignment of forces
were going on in the lobbies. A fictitious interest was given to this
work of "realising the revolution" by the Congress having met in the
Herren-Haus, the old Prussian House of Lords, the shrine of reaction.
It was piquant to see a fervent Majority Socialist and a fiery
Independent discussing whether Parliament and universal suffrage were
not irretrievably reactionary, under the cold marble nose of a
Prussian Princelet who had looked on them as the ultimate Chaos and
Dark Night of Revolution. But as will be seen, the _genius loci_, won
in the latter end.

The Congress took some days in making up its mind what line to take.
The Majority leaders did not know which way to turn, associating
themselves when they could with attacks on the Government, and when
they could not, apologising. For though the Independents on one side
and the small Democratic section on the other were disciplined bodies,
the Majoritarian bloc was disorganised. When it came to a vote they
obeyed the whip, but many slipped out, and the vote was very different
from what was expected.

The Government's advisers in politics and in the Press, finding that
so far from bringing over the Independents to the Government the
Congress was fast drawing the Majority into opposition, strongly
recommended the Government to close the Congress on the ground that it
was only wasting time in futile and inflammatory agitation. The
Independents countered this by forcing an immediate issue on the main
question--the constitutional recognition of the Council system.

The opening of the discussion showed that a majority of the Congress
favoured a combination of Parliament and Councils in which the latter
should have political as well as economic functions. Whether the
Majoritarian leaders in the Congress were genuinely convinced of the
necessity of giving the Council system recognition or whether they
were forced to compromise in order to retain command of their
followers, and through them control their following among the workmen,
I do not know. Anyway, after a series of speeches, in which the
Majoritarian leaders, Kalinsky and Cohn-Reuss, vied in concessions, a
compromise was put forward that represented practically the position
held by their opponents the Independents a few weeks before. The
compromise between the Parliamentary system and Council system they
proposed was probably workable; though arrived at from an unsound
position--that of regarding the Central Council as a controlling
authority over the National Assembly; whereas it would really be
supplying the driving power and the Assembly the brake.

Now, although the Independents, for the same tactical reasons that had
driven the Majoritarians to the Left, were now proclaiming the
principle of "all power to the Councils" (which had been until then
the position of the absent Communists) they were rather embarrassed at
finding themselves "Bolshevists," explicitly demanding the
dictatorship of the proletariat. The spring running of German
politics to the Left had been so headlong that the parliamentarian
leaders of the Left had had to sprint hard to keep ahead of their
followers. But if they had kept one eye anxiously gauging the pace of
the avalanche surging at their heels they had kept the other guessing
no less anxiously at the position of the abyss of "Bolshevism" ahead.
And small wonder if they were a little bewildered and out of breath.
For as late as December they had been still accepting the Assembly as
the sole executant of the revolution, and looking on the Councils as
practically extinct and politically eccentric. By January they had
been forced to accept the Councils as a fact that had to be fitted in
somehow. In February their periodicals were full of schemes for giving
economic powers to the Councils, while reserving all political power,
national and provincial, to the Assemblies. By March they had
recognised that they must have political power as well and by April
they had reached the compromise of a bi-cameral constitution now
adopted by their conservative opponents, the Majoritarians. And now,
in order to clear the leftward road for the Majoritarians and keep
pace with the Communists, old parliamentary hands, like Haase, Oscar
Cohn and Breitscheidt, found themselves condemning their newly born
and much beloved parliamentary democracy to be smothered in its cradle
for the benefit of a Bolshevist changeling. No wonder they were ready
to join forces with their Socialist comrades of the majority in a
compromise which found a place for their firstborn the Weimar
Parliament and for their familiar world of party politics.

Thus the Socialist parties, still hopelessly divided in that cold
storage of faction, the Weimar Assembly, had been re-fused and
re-moulded by the volcanic fires of the Congress.

One Sunday afternoon, after the Congress had been a week at work, I
heard that the leaders of these two sections had that morning
privately agreed to reconstitute the Central Council on a principle of
parity, _i.e._, twelve Majoritarians and twelve Independents, with a
few Democrats and soldiers.

This private agreement, unreported until after it had been repudiated,
was a political event of an importance second only to the revolution
itself. It reunited the Socialist party on a platform of realising the
revolution through the Council system by constitutional action. The
Congress of Councils, for whose dissolution the whole Press were
clamouring openly and every secret sinister influence was conspiring,
had in six days gone further towards the reconstruction and
re-orientation of Germany than Weimar had in six months.

But one obvious result of this new alliance between Majoritarians and
Independents in the Council system would have been the jettisoning of
Majoritarian Ministers, such as Noske, Landsberg and Scheidemann,
compromised by their complicity with reaction and the brutalities of
the Frei-Corps. It was therefore not surprising that the full force of
party pressure and of administrative authority was brought to bear on
the Majoritarian parties to the agreement. Under this pressure, like
good citizens and genuine Germans, they buckled up and broke down,
repudiating the principle of parity. They offered instead a proportion
of fourteen Majoritarians to ten Independents in the Central Council
or a representation corresponding to the numerical proportion of
parties in the gerrymandered Congress. These offers were refused, the
Congress came to an end, and the pusillanimity and place-hunting of
parliamentary politicians had ruined the revolution a second time. The
first was when the Independents, under pressure from the Left,
withdrew from the Coalition with the Majoritarians in December. The
second was when the Majoritarians, under pressure from the Right, now
in their turn withdrew from the reconstituted Coalition in May.

The Council was reconstituted with Majoritarians, and the Independents
were thrown back upon the Communists and "direct action." The only
course then left to the adherents of the Council movement was to
perfect their organisations and wait until parliamentary government
was overthrown, either by reaction or revolution. The first essential
for such organisation was a general electoral system which would put
the Councils on a regular basis and prevent such interference and
intrigues as had preceded the previous Congress. The last meeting that
I attended of the Plenary Assembly of Berlin Councils, the driving
body of the movement, was occupied with discussing the crucial
question as to who should be considered a workman and qualified to
vote and stand for a Council. It was there tentatively agreed that a
workman might have a few assistants without becoming an employer, and
that scientists, experts, and such like connected with an industry,
other than managers, directors and such, might count as workmen. On
the other hand the Assembly had to adjourn for a time in disorder
owing to protests against the presence of a police official as a
delegate of the Democrats. It was clearly going to be difficult to
express in terms of an electoral law a disability obvious enough in
each individual case. The German workmen were ready to admit to
equality anyone with any industrial productive status, who was not in
the service of declared enemies of the Councils--such as the captains
of industry or the Coalition Government. And so important is this
suffrage question as a gauge of the liberality of the Council movement
in Germany and of its distinction from Bolshevism, that I append as a
footnote the regulation of the Berlin Executive Council, published
previous to the Convention of the second Congress of Councils.[G]

This work of making the Council system really representative has been
much hampered of late by the growing reaction which is still trying to
break the neck of the movement by arresting its leaders, and impeding
its development in every way. At the same time, schemes are being
continually put forward by the less reactionary elements for drawing
the teeth of the movement by "diddling" concessions. Among such may be
counted the clauses "anchoring" the Councils in the Constitution. The
word itself shows how rapidly the German politicians are picking up
the devices of parliamentary democracy. Again and again, on the
platform and in the Press, the workmen are assured that all is well
with the Councils because they are "anchored" in the Constitution.
What the workmen want is not to see them "anchored" so much as under
way; but it is creditable diddling is that catchword, "anchored in the
Constitution." And another diddling device is the electoral law
advocated by the Majoritarians that the Government are trying to
impose on the Councils, which would penetrate the movement with
propertied interests and partition it up into regional areas.

Of late, indeed, the Council movement proper--the revolutionary
movement--has been almost driven underground. The Central office of
the Berlin Executive Council has been repeatedly raided, its leaders
are continually being arrested, and its meetings broken up. At a
conference of the Industrial Councils of Germany recently held (August
26th, 1919) at Halle from which all Majoritarians were excluded, the
general tone was pessimistic. It was recognised that the German
workman was not as a whole revolutionary in sentiment, that the mass
movement to the Left that had marked the first months of reaction had
to some extent been checked and that the Government policy of
compromising with the Council movement had had some measure of
success. No agreement could be reached at this conference, even on
such primary questions of policy as to whether the Government
proposals should be considered or whether the Trades Unions should be
co-operated with. Finally, centres of the revolutionary movement were
established at Halle and Leipzig.

From this it would seem that the revolutionary Council movement is
just at present passing through a phase of depression due to the
Government's diplomatic policy.

It will be seen that so far the German Councils are no political
system, but only a surge of spontaneous self-government. If they can
be really co-ordinated with the new political machinery, and if they
can be concentrated on the economic reconstruction of Germany, it may
be the salvation, not only of Germany but of Europe. For, though the
years of war have accustomed us to looking on Germans as barbarians
and better dead than alive, as a matter of fact this unattractive
people is still, as it always has been, the sturdiest and steadiest of
the workers of the world; and Germany is still the centre of gravity
of the European social system. There can be no stability in Europe if
the Germans are on strike. The consequences of driving the Russians
into extremes are before us now in the worst menace to the existing
social order since the peasants' rising of the Middle Ages. It will
take much pressure to drive the German revolution into extremes, but
if Germany once develops a real Bolshevism of its own, it will not be
long before the rest of the Continent follows its example.

It is a national characteristic of us English to fight new ideas and
institutions in principle abroad, while, in practice, we introduce
them at home under different names. This has worked well on the whole.
While reaction is occupied with damning and downing the novelty as an
absurdity and atrocity introduced by the brutal and barbarous
foreigner, _real-politik_ finds that the same novelty, under some new
name, helps production at home. Thus, while we fight the _Soviets_
with military expeditions and poison gas, and the milder
_Räte-Republics_ of Germany with military missions and diplomatic
notes, we work away at our Guild Socialism and our Shop Stewards'
Committees, extend Whitley Councils to the Civil Service and Welfare
Committees to the Navy, and even admit employés to joint control of
our railways.

There is an English revolution not only impending, but in progress,
and those to whom revolution means barricades and "Bolshevism" will be
relieved to hear that the course of events, both in Germany and
Russia, suggests that our British revolution is so well advanced that
these stimulants of a revolution, that has stiffened and stagnated,
will not be required. England, not being wholly, at all events for
long, run by London clubs and political cliques, manages to achieve
its political revolution by way of economic reconstruction, and it is
doing this on the same principles as Germany, though by a different
procedure. That is why it was as foolish for the British to try to
upset the Council movement of the Berliners as it was for the
Berliners to upset it among the Brunswickers and Bavarians.

Moreover, if the Councils can still be killed, the Germans themselves
will eventually kill them by diddling concessions or by diplomatic
compromises. For such compromises as those already put forward in
Germany show a fatal ignorance of, or indifference to, the fundamental
facts of this revolutionary movement. I much doubt whether the German
revolutionary workmen and their political leaders, whether Independent
or Communist, can ever be got to accept the Labour Chamber
(_Arbeitskammer_) with its parity of representation between employers
and employed; at all events, until the employer is represented by the
State. And such "nationalisation "is only valued by the German workman
as a preliminary to "socialisation." The workers are attached to the
Council idea largely because it attacks the capitalist, and gives the
workmen protection against him in a way the Union cannot. If the
Councils are to be widened into a democracy including all classes, the
power of private capital must first be broken or brought in bounds.

So desperate is the economic condition of the country that even the
Employers' Associations of Berlin have declared in favour of a large
measure of Council government. But this is an exception. The German
ruling class, and their middle-class supporters, recognise that their
class supremacy is challenged. They retort by attacking Council
government as class government and, consequently, as undemocratic. The
issue is represented as being between a Parliamentary democracy, as in
England, and a Soviet despotism, as in Russia. It seems worth while,
therefore, to the German ruling class to fight the revolution with its
own weapon of violence, rather than face the risks of Council
government; and this same view would doubtless be taken in England if
the question of principle were raised. In the recent railway strike
our Government, by appealing for national support against a leading
section of Labour, did, in fact, go far to create a class war.

But, as a matter of fact, the demand for a dictatorship by the
proletariat is not an essential element in the Council movement. Such
a demand is not the cause, but the consequence, of class conflict.
Essentially and fundamentally the Council movement, so far from being
less democratic than our Parliamentary system, is a revolt back to
the purest and most primitive democracy from the artificialities and
anomalies of modern Parliamentary representation. It is no more
undemocratic than the Renaissance was inartistic, the Reformation
unchristian, or the French Revolution anarchical. As the German
Revolution best shows, the growth of Councils is the result of a
revolutionary impulse in a modern community. Such an impulse uses any
form of association between men and women for the urgent political
purpose of appointing a spokesman and leader. The most widely spread
and deeply rooted association nowadays is industrial--in the workshop.
Consequently, we find the Councils taking predominantly an industrial
character and origin, as in our native embryo the Shop Stewards'
Committee. But any association will serve; and so, in the German
Revolution, besides the Workmen's Councils there were Soldiers'
Councils, Communal Councils, and even Unemployed Councils. If this new
system were to develop, so to say, in a vacuum, without opposition, it
would theoretically provide a democratic representation for every
human relationship. As it is, such representation is reduced, as in
Germany, by political pressure, to association that is rooted in the
most vital relationship; and we find the Unemployed Councils,
Communal Councils, and even Soldiers' Councils being choked off, and
only the Workmen's Councils surviving. This is why the practical
process in Germany is, as said before, leading to the same conclusions
as those come to by the _a priori_ reasoning of our own Guild
Socialists when they divide the citizen into consumer and producer,
and, in his latter capacity, give him representation through a Council
system. I found, in fact, that my most useful function in Germany at
one time was putting German Labour leaders in possession of the
conclusions of our Guild Socialists.

Nor, when we come to examine constitutional history, is there any real
difference between the democracy of the Council system and the
democracy of Parliament. They are the same in origin and will probably
be the same in development. For Parliament, it must be remembered,
grew out of a Council with an industrial suffrage--land tenure--which
was later reinforced by a general industrial suffrage through the
Boroughs and their Guild organisations. But, for the first two
centuries of its existence, say 1100 to 1295, Parliament, the National
Council of our Angevin Kings, was a _Soviet_, a _Betriebsrat_. It was
to this body that we owe our Magna Charta of 1215, the foundation of
our democracy. And, in the fourteenth clause of the Great Charter,
the clause constituting Parliament, we read that the summons was to be
sent direct to the Archbishops and Bishops, Earls and Greater Barons,
and, through the Sheriff, to all those "who hold of us in chief." It
was this latter body of tenants of the Crown that became the Knights
of the Shire in our House of Commons. The Knights of the Shire
represented the landed industrial interest as directly as the
representatives of the Boroughs represented other forms of industry
and commerce. Of course, later, the regional and representative system
gradually overlaid and obscured the original industrial basis, much as
it has done with the Council system in Russia and is doing in Germany.

The Council system in Germany has, in three months, indeed, covered
the course that took our Parliamentary system three centuries. This
corresponds roughly to the increased pace of political development
to-day. If we were to translate the Council movement of to-day into
the terms of the Parliamentary movement of seven centuries ago, we
might say that, before our present democracy could begin, industry had
to be nominally socialised by the principle that all land was held of
the King, and a strong central government established on a popular
basis of industrial councils, with equal representation for the two
other estates, the feudal or military and the clerical or official.
For we can see the progenitors of the Soldiers' Councils of to-day in
the feudal courts of yesterday, and of the Civil Service bureaucracy
of to-day in the chancellors and justiciars of yesterday. Thus we may,
if we like, see in the short history of the Russian Council movement
an epitome of our whole constitutional history. Or, we may compare the
present Council movement in England with the political situation early
in the thirteenth century, when the Greater Barons, progenitors of our
Captains of Industry, were about to force clause 14 of Magna Charta
and a National Whitley Council on a Civil Service of arrogant
ascetics, who were vainly trying to retain power for a silly and
selfish ruling class. In applying this analogy to the present day, the
Parliament of to-day would be no more than a survival of a previous
constitutional epoch, a Witanagemot applying Anglo-Saxon Dooms. And
this will, any way, give an idea of the way parliaments are looked
upon to-day by German workmen. Possibly, in the end, the
representative and regional system will rule the roost again, and will
force the industrial suffrage upstairs into a House of Lords that
will, in time, exercise mainly the judicial functions peculiar to its
original industrial character. But we have first to get our Magna
Charta and our Statutes of Westminster.

That the Council system of to-day is a truer democracy than existing
Parliamentary systems is also shown practically by its being a much
surer and safer machine for the realisation of public opinion.
Theoretically, the pyramidal piling up of Councils, each represented
in a superior Council, until a Central Council caps the pile, would
seem to be indirect election raised to infinity; and indirect election
is theoretically undemocratic. But this was not the conclusion forced
on one in Germany when one compared the working of the two systems.
The inferiority in the position of politicians, owing their power to
the Parliamentary system, compared with that of those based on the
Council system, was very striking. The Parliamentarians never knew
where they were or what was what. Out of touch, necessarily, with
their enormous constituencies, they seemed to be always crawling about
with their ears to the ground, dependent on agents and reporters of
every sort, even on the Press, for an idea of what was going on. As
they never knew where the hounds were, they could not use such
knowledge of the country as they had to lead the field. The leaders of
the Council movement, on the other hand, had an immediate indication
of every trend of opinion in the changing composition of the lower
strata of Councils; and their difficulty was rather to control the
energies that came pouring up to them through the system. The
Parliamentary leader seemed like a water finder, wandering about and
waiting for the twig to twiddle, while the Council leader was more
like a marine engineer with his eye on the pressure gauge and his hand
on the lever. Perhaps indirect election is only undemocratic when the
function of the lower body is mainly to elect to a higher, but becomes
democratic when it has vital functions of its own that are merely
controlled by the higher body.

And yet another point and a paradox. Whereas the results of Council
representation of opinion in Germany are not revolutionary, the
results of the Parliamentary system are becoming more and more so, and
not only in Germany but in Great Britain. The failure of the
Parliamentary system to express the forces making for change--a
failure not confined to Germany--and the fictitious relationship
between the elector and the elected has two results. It diverts a
large part of these forces of progress into various forms of direct
action, all of them revolutionary, whether actively so, such as street
fighting, or passively so, such as strikes. It also gives a
revolutionary character to the periodical elections. For the vast
constituencies vote merely along the line of the least common multiple
of their mob minds. This line is generally a vague dissatisfaction;
and unless it be diverted by "stunts" or otherwise diddled, will
result in violent pendulum swings. Under these impulses Parliament
will become still less representative, and will tend to be either
revolutionary or reactionary. For an exaggerated majority is the
extremists' opportunity.

The Council movement, on the other hand, slowly changing from below
upwards, should never drop much behind the drift of opinion, and
consequently should be in little danger of being driven ahead of it.
The German Parliament, as the results of an election decided by this
L.C.M. motive of the mob mind--a motive of assuring power to whichever
party seemed to offer the best prospect of peace abroad and at
home--is to-day reactionary. Whereas the political condition of
Germany to-day is such that it absolutely must have a Government
responsive to the requirements of reconstruction, or relapse into
civil war. The Weimar Parliament is so dead that only civil war can
galvanise it to action. If reinforced by a Council system, the Weimar
Party Government and the Preuss Federal Constitution would perhaps
have steam enough to work.

The Councils are as essential to Germany to-day as the Commons were to
us a century ago. Indeed, our insistence on the supremacy of the
Weimar Assembly as a guarantee for the maintenance of peace, can be
paralleled by our insistence a century ago on the maintenance of Upper
Houses in the constitutions of the States revolutionised from France.
The function of the territorially elected Parliament will, in Germany,
and probably everywhere, become more and more that of an Upper House;
while the industrially elected Congress will be the creative and
constructive institution. The whole difficulty lies in finding a
working compromise, or rather co-operation. Just as Feudalism imposed
its political system which survives in the House of Lords, just as
Liberalism imposed its system as represented in the House of Commons,
which now obviously requires supplementing, so Socialism must have its
political system in the Councils. This is not revolution but
evolution. The revolution comes from thwarting and threatening it.

FOOTNOTES:

[F] They have since been replaced by two anti-revolutionary bodies, a
sort of gendarmerie and a local middle class militia (Einwohnerwehr).
The Frei-corps have become the Reichswehr.

[G] The re-organisation and reconstruction of our political and economic
existence calls for the co-operation of the whole effective population.
The revolution has given us the means of such reconstruction in the
Council system. In order to give the Council system its full development
and a better foundation, fresh elections to the Workmen's Councils are
indispensable.

1. All hand and head workers over 10 years without distinction of sex
who earn their living by labour of public utility without exploiting the
labour of others are entitled to vote. Are also entitled those who
employ a limited number of helpers for their livelihood, as doctors,
druggists, writers, jurists, artists, etc.--as also small industrials
and craftsmen who do not employ others.

2. Are excluded from voting those owners of means of production who use
them to their own advantage and always through the labour of others.
Also those who rent a private-capitalist industry or institutions worked
by the labour of others. Also those who live from ground rents or
interest as also those like Directors, etc., paid in percentage fees.

3. Elections to Workmen's Councils are by proportional representation
and by professions or industries. Great industries form distinct
electoral bodies while medium and small industries will be associated.
Professions and professional groups that do not work with other employés
within a particular industry will form professional electoral bodies;
employés in domestic service, housewives, unemployed and invalids will
be provided for in special regulations.

Further instructions as to the electoral regulations and procedure will
be issued shortly.

                                 The Executive Council,
                                                  RICHARD MÜLLER,
                                                  FRITZ PROLAT.





CHAPTER VI

THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES


Coming back from Germany to Great Britain one finds oneself in the
position of an explorer returned from a new world. For our Edwardian
England knows to-day as little of the real conditions in Central
Europe as Elizabethan England knew of Central Africa. And our Press
cartoonists and Propaganda caricaturists have filled the blank spaces
of our mental maps with fancy pictures of monsters whom they label
Boches and Bolsheviks, Huns and Spartacists, just as did the old
cartographers. Whereas these fancy pictures are no more like the real
wild beasts of Europe than the Unicorns and Behemoths of the old maps
were like the rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses of Africa; and anyway
are about as important an element in the problems of Central Europe
to-day as the hippopotamuses are in those of Central Africa.

The difficulty is that our natural intuitions of policy and our
natural instincts of humanity have been for five years persistently
perverted and distorted. We do not know that we are seeing everything
as in a glass darkly, and that we are being prevented from coming face
to face with real facts and forces. That is why in this summer of
1919, as in that summer of five years ago, appeals to our conscience
and common sense are useless. We are letting ourselves be hurried
hopelessly and helplessly into the worst of peaces, as we then let
ourselves be hurried into the worst of wars. But with this difference;
that five years ago the principal criminals were the Junkers and War
Lords of Germany; to-day they are the Jingoes and Peace Delegates of
the Entente. The Germans have paid, or are paying, the penalty of
trusting their War Lords; both those Germans who passively submitted
to that folly and those who actively protested against it. We, too,
shall all have to pay for putting our trust in our Princes of the
Peace. We are paying--many of my old corps have already paid with
their lives--for the mistakes of our diplomatists with the Russian
Revolution. We shall pay for their mistakes with the German Revolution
when we too come face to face with realities again.

For that is the main difference between the Germans and ourselves
to-day. They have been reduced to realities. The artificialities of
their shoddy Kaiser and their shallow Kultur have fallen in ruins
round them. The monstrous military machine they built up for their own
protection, and used for the oppression of Europe, is smashed. There
remains just the German burgher and the German worker, both
slow-witted simple souls. So slow and simple indeed, that they have
allowed a few hundred German bureaucrats to go on governing them;
thereby giving us a wrong impression of what they are thinking and
wanting. In reality the Germans to-day are like the Russians of two
years ago, a molten mass awaiting a new mould, ready to be inspired by
such new political ideas as may be instilled into them. In Germany now
a new idea will take root, flower and bear fruit in a few days. I have
watched the process myself with ideas imported from England. But
instead of throwing open the western frontier of Germany to free
commerce and communication we maintained our blockade and our boycott,
thereby forcing New Germany to turn to the East for its ideals and
institutions. And now comes this Treaty with a further development of
this same policy of blockade and boycott. Germany is for a generation
or so to be sentenced to loss of its sovereign rights, confiscation
of its whole estate and penal servitude. We have overlooked the
opportunity we had of making Germany a moral dependency, a natural
ally looking at the world from our political point of view, absorbing
our ideas and associating itself with our ideals; and we have abused
the opening given us by unlimited military power in order to attempt
the material exploitation of Germany. We might have made Germany a
racial and regional border province of Anglo-Saxondom, and a barrier
against the Asiatic irruption that is once again advancing against
Europe across the Russian plains. We have preferred to try and reduce
it to another Ireland--an Ireland of seventy millions with Russia at
its back. I am reminded of the remark of a German politician: "Give us
an open door and we shall be no worse than poor relations; build a
Chinese wall against us and you will make us into Tartars."

An adequate criticism of the Treaty that we are proposing to force on
Germany would be as long as the Treaty itself. There are two main
difficulties in such criticism; one is that, owing to the secret
preparation of the Treaty and the public indifference as to its
provisions, very few people in England have any idea even of what the
financial and economic clauses amount to. German protests are ignored,
of course, as mere "squealing." We have a general feeling that what
is bad for the Germans is good for the world; and, anyway, we don't
want to be bothered with Germany any more.

The other difficulty is the Treaty's formlessness and its want of
design. A careful comparison of the articles and their appendices
suggests that the essential policy of the whole is a compromise
between, or rather a cobbling together of, two contradictory points of
view, the French and the Anglo-Saxon; while in its externals it is an
attempt to camouflage European Imperialism with American Idealism.

In the Jehad we have just fought against Germany, the low material
object of the French was to extirpate; while that of the English was
rather to enslave. The high moral object of the French was to rescue
Alsace-Lorraine; the high moral object of the English was to protect
Belgium. Consequently, reading the Treaty is something like reading
the Koran. The mind cannot get the point of view or purpose. It loses
itself in dicta, as determinative in detail for the weal or woe of
mankind as they are disconnected in themselves and dissociated from
any general doctrine, or even from any especial dogma. One soon gives
up trying to grasp the Treaty. And one puts it aside with the
consoling thought that "the Koran or the Sword" is good enough for
those who, like the Huns, are not "people of the Law"; and that
everything depends on the "idjra," the "interpretative effort" of
future pundits.

There is something tragic about such petty killings and cruelties as
those ordained by the sinister reactionaries of the Eden Hotel in
Berlin. But there is something ludicrous about the miseries and
murders _en masse_ organised by the highly respectable reactionaries
of the Hotel Majestic. It is as though we:--

    had resolved to extirpate the vipers
    With twenty Balliol men and forty lady typers.

On the morning of that Thursday in May, the German reading public took
up its morning paper with a sigh of relief that the long suspense was
ended--and dropped it again with a gasp of despair. But Germany wore
its rue with a difference. The opposition to the Treaty was of two
kinds. The original split of the Independent idealists with the
Majoritarian real-politikers had been over foreign policy--first in
the prosecution of the war, then in the preparation for peace. These
Independents condemned such crimes as the U-boat war and the military
murders of Miss Cavell and Captain Fryatt, uncompromisingly. Their
main reason for leaving the Coalition Socialist Government in
December was that they could not get their liberal policy carried in
respect either of Poland and the Baltic provinces, or as to a frank
recognition of responsibility for the war and full reparation to
France and Belgium.

Their main objection to the present Government had been that it
prejudiced the German political revolution and spiritual renascence in
the eyes of the Entente. And they now, as representing the main forces
of idealism in Germany, opposed the peace terms on international not
on national grounds--as a conspiracy against the peace and prosperity
of the European worker, not as a combination against the power and
progress of the German Empire. Consequently, as the main body of the
workers, that is, the driving power of the country, were of this party
and had moreover been forced out of practical politics by the reaction
party, when the terms were published there was no spontaneous
explosion of emotion in Germany. Crushing as they were, there was no
moral force to oppose against them; either national, as a century
before in revolutionary France, or international, as a year before in
revolutionary Russia.

The whole tone of private conversations and of Press _communiqués_ on
Thursday and Friday showed that the Government with individual
exceptions, would sign the terms. And further the whole tradition of
the Majority-Socialist and of the Centrum rank and file suggested that
they would in this follow the lead of the Government and give it a
parliamentary majority. Indeed, such passive acquiescence reflected
accurately enough the prevalent point of view in a disorganised and
devitalised community.

Late on that Friday night, judging from an account given me of the
proceedings in the Cabinet and from general considerations, I
telegraphed that Germany would sign even such conditions as those
published.[H]

But where all is negative and minus, a very small positive and plus
factor can make itself predominant. The Democratic party represented
politically such nationalist idealism as was left. Theodor Wolff, in
the _Berliner Tageblatt_, started a campaign for non-signature, at
first only with the compromising support of the extreme Right. Within
a few hours the feeble Government and half-famished capital came
under pressure from two points--Paris and the provinces.

The German delegation to Paris had been made very representative in
order to strengthen the Government in eventually imposing unacceptable
terms on various interests; but the effect of their week's wait in
their wired pen at Fontainebleau seems to have been to give them all
an incipient attack of "barb wire fever." As the guiding brain of the
Cabinet, Landsberg had been substituted for David on the delegation
owing to personal and political reasons, and as influential Majority
Socialists were on it also, this was serious. Opposition to signature
appeared in the Cabinet; and the leading article in Sunday's
_Vorwärts_ by Stampfer, the editor, who had gone to Paris hoping to
meet his French _confrères_ indicated that the Majority Socialists
were also dividing on the question of signature.

Accordingly the Democratic parliamentary party having declared
unanimously against signature, the Centrum and Majority Socialists
followed suit with large majorities--only five in the latter party
voting for signature. The Government Press then began to challenge the
Independents to make good their professed policy; with the intention
of forcing them to form a Government which would take the odium of
signing. The Independent leaders were approached on these lines.

The Independents found themselves in a difficulty. At first they were
inclined to accept, but realised in time that if they did so they
would be utterly prejudiced both politically and popularly. Moreover,
their Left wing and the Communists would not join any Government on a
Parliamentary basis; while the Majority Socialists would probably help
the Right in throwing them out again on a nationalist reaction as soon
as they had signed. They accordingly decided to declare for signature,
but to refuse to relieve the Government from the responsibility for
its own policy.

The parliamentary situation accordingly developed by Monday into the
usual deadlock. But in Germany the parliamentary situation represents,
even less than elsewhere, the realities of life. The meeting of the
Assembly on Monday, which was to be a national demonstration, was a
failure both in staging and in steam. Held in the University aula,
under the great fresco of Fichte rallying the German youth to its
resurrection after the peace of Tilsit, it only served to accentuate
the difference between the nationalist idealism that rebuilt Germany
in the last century and the internationalist idealism that may
rebuild it now. For, in this Assembly of more or less compromised and
wholly commonplace elderly politicians there was nothing vital or
novel. The set speeches had mostly been written by propaganda
officials and the very applause had been planned beforehand.

On the following day were open-air meetings, which gave a better index
of public opinion. Of the two I saw, the first was a big Majority
Socialist gathering, addressed by Fischer on the Koenigsplatz in a
speech curiously like Scheidemann's. Thence a crowd that, if small,
was select, one might say "super" select, demonstrated before the
Hotel Adlon, the centre of the foreign correspondents and Missions,
until dispersed by a rather dilatory detachment. But the foreign
correspondents of course responded to these efforts for their
entertainment and enlightenment with sensational "stories" of "Scenes
in Berlin."

The conclusion I came to was that those German working men who were
still under trade unionist and party leaders, would, with the middle
class, follow the Government lead in this, as in anything else.

The other meeting, in a remote workmen's quarter, was addressed by the
Independent Breitscheidt, whose every point was punctuated by
guttural growls from half-starved workmen and women. The recital of
Germany's renunciations and restrictions under the Treaty was listened
to in silence; but the conclusion that the old _régime_, if
victorious, would have done this and worse was received with an
emphatic "sehr richtig" (quite true). The interruptions from two
middle-class youths near me, to the effect that an Englishman or
Frenchman saying what Breitscheidt had said in London or Paris would
have to run for his life--true enough too--were badly received. "Fat
cheeks," screamed a haggard woman, pointing out that the young men
were chubby. "Frei-Corps puppies," shouted a workman, giving the
explanation of their being well fed. And it would have gone hard with
them if the Independent leaders had not intervened to get them clear.
The speaker's conclusions that the peace must be signed at once, that
it must be signed by those responsible for it, and that thereafter
there would be an "Independent" Government, was received with a
diminuendo of assent. The poorer and less political German workman
wanted peace, but had no will to power.

There was indeed no fight left in Germany; though I doubt if anyone in
England realises how near the conditions imposed by Paris went to
provoking a desperate appeal to arms. When it became evident that no
mitigation of importance was to be got, every member of the Government
of any character, whether reactionary or radical, resigned; leaving
only men like Landsberg and Erzberger. While the revolutionary
opposition persisted in their refusal to take the responsibility of
signing. When it became obvious that this "Rump" was prepared to sign,
and that the Weimar Assembly would support it in doing so, a military
conspiracy was organised to prevent signature by a _coup d'état_.
Weimar, the week before signature, filled with generals, and small
bodies of Frei-Corps threatened the complaisant Cabinet. But obviously
the coercion of Weimar into refusing signature was not enough, and
would only have resulted in a second revolution rather than a
reaction. The main operation was to have been a march south to Berlin
and Weimar, of the Army of the East in West Prussia. But, at the last
moment, these Frei-Corps refused to move. The better elements of them
had volunteered to defend the frontiers against Poles and Russians,
not to overthrow the National Assembly at the orders of reactionary
generals. The worse elements were ready to fight their own countrymen,
the revolutionaries, given a superiority of ten to one; but had no
stomach for a last ditch defence against the Entente with the odds
reversed. So Landsberg and Erzberger, the Jew and the Jesuit, by
extraordinary and characteristic exertions, secured signature by a
Cabinet of nonentities under the burly and worthy Trades Union boss,
Bauer.

I do not propose to criticise the different provisions of the Treaty
of Versailles or show in detail where they are unjust and why they are
unsound. But it may be of use to report the effect that certain of
these provisions have had in Germany and will have in Europe; and to
represent how the force on which this treaty depends for its
execution--the static force of an enormous Entente preponderance in
the Balance of Power, comes into collision with the forces at work in
Europe--the dynamic forces of the industrial revolution that are at
present more active in Germany than anywhere else.

First, then, as to its injustice and the effect this is having in
Germany. There are three main foci of public opinion in Germany as in
every country: Right, Centre and Left: Conservative, Liberal and
Radical: Upper Middle and Lower: Privilege, Property and Proletariat;
or, however else you may chose to denote the eternal political
triangle. The Treaty deals each of these two blows; one blow slashes
off its right hand and the other slaps it in the face. And it is the
insult and not the injury that will most affect the future of Europe.

Let us take the Conservative idealists first--the Prussian landowner,
the Berlin official, the Bavarian cleric, the officer, and the
student. The surrender of West Prussia and Danzig to Poland, and the
severance of East Prussia for its future inclusion in a Baltic
Federation, mean the loss of its right arm to this ruling class. An
idea of how it appears to them can be given, perhaps, by supposing
that we had lost the war, that Germany had set up Ireland and Scotland
as separate States, had annexed Wales to Ireland on racial grounds,
had included therein Shropshire and Cheshire with their ancient county
families, and had made a corridor across Wessex to Weymouth, cutting
off Somerset and Devon, while Cornwall went to a new State of
Brittany. I do not mean, of course, that this would be exactly
similar, but that the blow to the sensibilities of our patriots would
be as severe. Should we not have a halo cast about the Victorian, the
Elizabethan, the Alfredian and the Arthurian legends that would make
the lost provinces a Holy Land to be redeemed at any sacrifice?
Fortunately Germans are not like English in this and the territorial
settlement may last our time, though it will lead to unintended
results. The gloomy comment to me of a Polish conservative on the
Danzig settlement was that in two generations Poland would be
Jew-German. The even more gloomy view of a Russian radical was that,
unless Bolshevism made good, the whole middle belt of Baltic States,
with Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, would fall under German
bourgeois influence. While, most pessimistic of all, a cosmopolitan
Jew considered that the result of breaking up Austria and barring off
Germany must be to Balkanise Central and Eastern Europe first, and to
Bolshevise it afterwards. All one can say, is, that where such
revolutionary forces are loosened as are now at large in Central
Europe, German nationalism offered us a stronger line to hold than
that of Lithuanian or Ukrainian or even Polish independence.

And we might have held both lines, but for that slap in the face. The
time I spent in Germany after the publication of the peace was made
painful, not by the Danzig or Saar questions, but by the menace of
penal proceedings against individual Germans. If our object was to
find something that would impress our hatred and contempt on the
Germans we succeeded. Only the most moderate of those with nationalist
opinions could speak of it at all: the majority, thereafter, closed
their doors to me as an English-man. If anything could have
rehabilitated the Kaiser, we should have done it by putting him at the
head of men, like submarine Commanders, who, in German eyes, had done
desperate deeds to break a barbarous blockade. Our prosecution in fact
outraged both the sense and sensibilities of all German gentlemen as
much as the crimes themselves had outraged ours. This may seem
fanciful, but it is a fact. If action is taken under these criminal
clauses we shall light such a candle to the memories of our dead as
will some day set Europe on fire again. Whether we could ever have
proceeded by international action to trace the responsibility for
military murders, such as those of Miss Cavell and Captain Fryatt,
without arousing a national sense of wrong in Germany, no longer
matters; we cannot do so now.

Next, as to the effect of the Treaty on the Liberals, the moderates,
the men of property. If the ideals of the Conservatives and their
interests in land made them nationalist, the ideals of the Liberals
and their interests in industry tended to make them imperialist. And
the Treaty cuts off Germany from all imperial ideals and cripples it
in industry.

The growth of German industry in late years, comparable only to
industrial growth in North America, was due, as with us, to the
combination of coal with iron and of first-rate management with
foreign markets. The Treaty has deprived Germany, in the east, of the
Silesian coalfields with their dependent industries, and, in the west,
of the Lorraine and Saar ores; which, together, may be compared to the
loss of South Wales and Northumberland. It has also deprived Germany,
not only of its colonies, but also of its commercial establishments
abroad, so closing foreign markets to it except by way of foreign
intermediaries, bankers, brokers and shippers. There is nothing left
of German foreign commerce and little left of German industry but a
mutilated torso; for it has not only lost its right hand in Lorraine
but also its left in Silesia. Yet, what German men of business feel it
hardest to forgive is not the injury done by the Treaty but the
insult. That camouflaged receivership, the Reparation Commission,
prejudges Germany as a fraudulent bankrupt. If we had in the Treaty
fixed our claims as creditors and negotiated with Germany as to how
they could be paid, the German middle class would have taken a pride
in showing itself equal to the enormous emergency even as the French
did in the far less searching trial of 1870. But this foreign
Commission has been given such powers as have never yet been proposed
for foreign financial control, even of the most wholly bankrupt and
barbarous Sovereign State. Those powers will, of course, never be
exercised, and they would defeat the object of the financial
provisions of the Treaty if they were; but the unnecessary insult they
involve has cost us the co-operation of the German middle classes in
rebuilding the economic system of Europe.

And, now for the last mistake. The one desire of the lower classes of
Germany, whether industrial or agricultural, is for peace and plenty.
In condemning them to a continuance of war conditions for nine months
after their surrender and revolution we turned them from
internationalists, ready to welcome us as representatives of democracy
and as crusaders for an international ideal, into either nationalists
who looked on us as enemies seeking the destruction of all Germans, or
into internationalists who looked on us as enemies of the revolution
seeking their destruction as we were seeking that of the Russians. The
result has been that we have lost the co-operation of the German
working class in extending our system of parliamentary Government to
Central and Eastern Europe. And it requires no profound political
knowledge of continental conditions to recognise that, without such
co-operation, British political ideas and institutions and with them
British political influence will not penetrate Europe.

To this result two actions on our part especially contributed. The
first, our opposition to the union of German-Austria with Germany; the
second, our refusal to admit Germany to the League of Nations. These
were the two meaningless, almost motiveless insults that in my opinion
have done us more lasting harm in Europe than such mistakes in practical
policy as the maintenance of the blockade. The repudiation, presumably
at French dictation, of both the principle of nationality and that of
self-determination was bad enough. It was worse to try to buttress an
artificial barrier between two sections of the German race by assigning
German populations to neighbouring States--Germans of Bohemia to
Tchecho-Slovakia--Germans of Karinthia to Yugo-Slavia--Germans of the
Tyrol to Italy. This diplomatic device failed even in a far more
thorough form in Poland over a century ago. Just as the policy of
artificial separation failed in the case of Eastern Roumelia.

But, apart from such moral considerations which must in the long run
defeat our policy of segregating Austro-Germans, that policy might
have been seen to be impolitic even in its most material and immediate
aspects.

The idea of a union of Germany and Austria presented itself to our
minds as an aggrandisement of Germany. But if the union of Germany and
Austria would have been a concession to the force of German
nationality, yet it would have been no reinforcement of German
nationalism. Union with German-Austria would indeed have been the best
guarantee against Germany's relapse into Prussianism. For the marriage
of Prussia and Austria would not be due to affection nor to ambition
nor even to advantage, but to affinity. German-Austria might indeed
consider herself fortunate in having a relation bound by family ties
to take her for better or worse, for richer or poorer, with all her
dowry of decrepitude and debt. "Tu felix Austria nube" would have
acquired a new meaning.

The phrase, "union of Germany with Austria" might suggest a great
extension eastwards of German imperialism over Eastern Europe and Asia
Minor. But a glance at the map shows that, whereas previously Germany
enjoyed by alliance with Austria political control eastwards to the
Carpathians and Balkans and economic control to the Ægean and Black
Sea, now Germany is barricaded on the east at its national frontier by
strong national States; and by union with German-Austria would receive
an extension of its own national frontier not eastward but southward.
The effect of union with Austria would be to add to Germany not
another East Prussia or Silesia, but another Baden or Bavaria.

What would be the political consequence of this geographical extension
southward? We all know the blood differences between Southerner and
Northerner in German politics. The North with a Protestant and
Prussian mentality, a bureaucratic and burgher government, an
efficient and energetic morale, a land of big business and big
battalions; and the south a Catholic and conservative mentality, an
easy-going and eclectic morale, a land of fat farms and the fine arts.
And war and revolution have only changed without lessening these
differences. The new Austrian province in the south would have acted
as ballast to steady the rollings of the Ship of State, top-heavy with
its northern profiteers and proletariat. Nor would we be right if we
assumed from the short-lived Räte-Republik of Munich that Vienna would
bring an accession of strength to the Communists. It is the clerical
Centrum, Parliamentary Government and Federalism that would have
benefited from the Union.

And, not only as a community, but as individuals, Austrians would have
a useful political _rôle_ in the new German democracy. Some of us may
have noticed how the Bavarians and Rheinländers come to the front in
Germany as liberal speakers and writers. The Austrians would have
brought a like leaven into the lump of half-baked German civilisation.
The Austrian in all the elegancies of life is as superior to the
German as he is inferior to him in all life's efficiencies. Finally,
they would have served as interpreters and intermediaries between
Germans and other races. It is as difficult to dislike an Austrian as
to like a Prussian.

As to the material effect of the Union, we find that the total
population of the German Republic after union would have been no more
than was that of the German Empire before the war. At the beginning of
the war the latter was 68 millions. Up to January, 1919, the excess of
deaths over births was 700,000, the war casualties 1.8 millions.
Losses in Alsace-Lorraine, Posen and Schleswig will reduce this, at
least, to 61 millions and probably to below 60 millions.
German-Austria cannot bring in more than 9 millions and may bring in
as little as 6 millions. So that Germany would about have regained in
the south what it has lost in the east, north and west.

Now, as to money. The public debt of Austria, without Hungary, was
83.17 milliard kronen. This has still to be apportioned among the new
national States; but even on the most favourable basis for
German-Austria, that of population, it will mean a debt of about 30
milliard kronen with an annual charge of 1.5 milliards. This will mean
a much heavier charge per head than that in Germany. The note
circulation was 37.5 milliards, of which less than 10 per cent. is
secured in gold; and a restoration of the currency will therefore be a
costly business.

Economically, German-Austria is a poor country with a few prosperous
rural districts and an imperial capital. Its agriculture produces
between half and two-thirds per acre of the average German production.
Its live stock is so depleted as to be practically destroyed. Its few
factories and inferior railways are in worse condition even than the
German, which is saying much. It has no coal supplies and no port. As
to Vienna, it is difficult to say what will happen to it. It may have
a future as the land-port of Germany on the east, as Hamburg is on the
west, and as a commercial and financial centre for the new nations;
but for the next few years it will be in industrial and financial
liquidation, as the imperial banks and businesses reorganise and
redistribute themselves among the nations. Vienna's machine, motor and
railway works and the Alpine Montant Company with large iron ore
deposits, are the most important assets that go with German-Austria.
Of course, there are wealthy industrial districts and mineral deposits
in German-Bohemia and the Sudetic country, but the question of their
union with Germany is a different one. The Bohemian Republic is making
a strong bid to the industrial "interests" of these German districts,
which fear the competition of Saxony should they enter the German
union. It will be interesting to see whether this alliance between
plutocracy and diplomacy will avail to keep these German populations
permanently in the Tchech State. But with the exception of a few
dynastic, clerical and capitalistic interests, German-Austria is
to-day German, not Austrian.

You would have a better idea of the difference between German-Austria
and the old Austrian Empire if you had visited Dr. Hartmann, the
representative of German-Austria in the old Austrian Embassy in
Berlin. There, in a palladian palace that was once a centre of the
peculiar blend of courtly brilliance and corrupt brutality with which
the Austrian Empire kept itself going, you found a modest rather
melancholy don and a young secretary; looking like lost souls of a
national democracy buried in the sarcophagus of imperialist
diplomacy. But after a few minutes' talk you also found that these
mild-mannered men represented that force that broke to fragments the
Iron Crown of the House of Habsburg, and that will break its way to
Union over the paper barricade of the Hall of Mirrors.

There is, indeed, nothing to be said for the insistence of the Supreme
Council at Paris on delaying the union of Austro-Germany with Germany.
The forcible splitting off of East Prussia and the subjection of
millions of Germans to Polish, Tchecho-Slovak and Yugo-Slav
governments, though indefensible in principle, may be defended by
practical arguments--for instance that these German ports and lands
are geographically essential to the new States, while their German
population will be a valuable element in them. The assignment of the
Tyrol to Italy may have a diplomatic defence as a design to falsify
future relations between Germans and Italians, to the advantage of
France and England. The acquisition of German Lorraine and the Saar
valley by France may be explained by the policy of making France
industrially independent of Germany and of preventing any future
economic hegemony of Germany in Europe. An insistence on
Austro-Germany entering the German Republic might have been explained
as an attempt to save Germany from Bolshevism and Prussianism, and to
keep it quiet. But an insistence on Austro-Germany remaining
independent, with its corollary in the intrigues for a separate Rhine
Republic, seem to me as diplomatically ill-considered as they are
democratically ill-conceived. We intended a material injury to German
nationalists, but we have only inflicted a mortal insult on the German
nation.

The Treaty of Versailles has then no elements either of permanence or
of peace; because it runs counter both to facts and to forces both in
the region of national and in that of international relationships.

In the national region it stultifies its own objects most effectively.
Now nationalist idealism, though existing in Germany to-day only among
the conservative gentry and a small section of upper-class
progressives, is not a negligible quantity. For nationalism has
control of the whole Coalition Government, the whole Press, with the
exception of a few opposition Labour papers, and the whole of the
Frei-Corps and the armed police. Owing to our continuation of a state
of war after the armistice, the German Government has, by a logical
process it would take too long to trace, become purely nationalist,
instead of mainly socialist and internationalist. More than that, it
has come into collision with Socialism and the German Revolution in
its efforts to maintain a _régime_ such as we would recognise. The
nationalist forces, that it relies on to maintain parliamentary party
government and the supremacy of the propertied class to the exclusion
both of Council Government and of a possible supremacy of the
proletariat, were, in the first place, the more liberal bureaucracy
and the officers, and in the second place the "Frei-Corps." But as
pointed out already the Treaty we imposed on Germany forced out of the
Government all the better elements of the bureaucratic and bourgeois
classes. While the "Frei-Corps" with which the Government now holds
all the principal towns under military rule have as moral ideals
patriotism, privilege and property, and as material inducements high
pay and quadruple rations. They embody not only the survivors of the
officer caste, but also the young burghers and students, hitherto the
Young Guard of revolution. Their formation was due partly to our
delusion that a professional army is necessarily democratic because we
have one, and that a short service militia is necessarily militarist
because Germany used that method for its recovery a century ago; and
partly to a reaction against the revolution in Germany itself. By now
they have become the foundation of the present parliamentary _régime_.
But the Treaty requires their reduction from over 400,000 to a quarter
of that number, while it utterly discredits the nationalist Government
by imposing on it humiliations such as no modern nation has ever yet
undergone. Therefore, while our policy requires the maintenance of the
present German parliamentarians and their police as the only possible
native agents for the realisation of our economic exploitation of
Germany, our procedure renders their retention of power materially and
morally impossible. As I myself think that the economic policy is as
shortsighted as it is wrongheaded, I do not regret that the
territorial and military provisions will, unless materially modified,
prevent any possibility of realising any part of it. That they will
shortly revive racial and religious frontier wars in which we shall
probably be involved is a minor matter. Better we should lose more men
and millions in expeditions to subject frontier provinces to their
racial and religious enemies, than try to subjugate all Germany to our
imperial system as we apparently aspire to do in the economic and
financial clauses.

In the international region also the Treaty has similarly stultified
itself. It depends for its execution on the acceptance by Germany not
only of its provisions but of the principles on which it is based.
These principles assume that Germany will conform Constitutionally to
the European system that we are setting up. That is that Germany will
have a parliamentary government in which the upper and middle classes
will preponderate. This Germany was quite prepared to do, and regarded
its revolution chiefly as the qualification for admission to the
Allied system on an equal footing. Parliamentary Government meant to
Germany last winter not so much liberty as equality and
fraternity--equality in the world's markets and fraternity in a League
of Nations. In other words, peace and food. When Germany found that it
was to be excluded from the League and outlawed, parliamentary
government _à l'anglaise_ was left without a leg to stand on. It lost
its right leg because nationalists reverted to militarism and its left
leg because internationalists turned towards Sovietism. It can fairly
be said that the Weimar Assembly and the National Government that
signed the Treaty of Peace represented no German force but merely
German weakness. If the Treaty is ever to be enforced it can only be
so through the Reichstag, and what it stands for, and yet the Treaty
has gone out of its way to weaken the Reichstag.

In respect of such criticisms I am continually being told by my
quondam diplomatic colleagues that they quite agree, but that they
could get nothing better; and, given the conditions under which they
worked at Paris, they think that things might have been much worse.
And this seems to be the line also of the American delegation, with
the exception of some bolder younger spirits who broke off into open
opposition. Of course, given these conditions, they could do no
better. But that's just what they ought to have provided against.
Every diplomatist knows, or ought to know, that the result of his
negotiations will depend on two things; his success in interpreting to
and impressing on his foreign surroundings the forces he represents
whether they be ironclads or ideals; and his success in selecting such
surroundings as will be most effectively impressed. It is mainly
because they have not learnt the second part of this lesson that
American diplomatists fail. It was a great discovery when we found
after years of negotiation at Washington in which either nobody got
any forrarder at all or we got altogether the worst of it, that it was
only necessary to transfer the venue to The Hague or Paris or London,
and American diplomacy collapsed. I am not going into detail,
interesting though it might be. But I used to explain it to myself by
analysing American diplomacy as an attitude of business instincts and
moral ideals which felt itself absurd in the cold, courtly, and
cynical atmosphere of diplomacy; so, instead of imposing its own rules
and standards, it either became helpless or tried hurriedly to adapt
and adjust itself. We have only to read the memoirs of American
Ambassadors to see that it takes a Benjamin Franklin to realise that
broadcloth and beaver are more effective at Court than gold lace and a
feathered hat. For it is this and nothing more that explains how an
American failed in the greatest political opportunity offered to
mortal man in modern times. And if President Wilson, with all the
trumps in his hands, could win so few tricks and left the table
politically bankrupt, it may seem perhaps absurd to have expected
anything from our liberal representatives, tied and bound abroad by
the chains of their secret treaties, tethered and burdened at home by
their dependence on a conservative clique and on an imperialist
newspaper proprietor.

Yet, those of our rulers who wanted a real peace treaty not a mere
truce for dividing the spoils, ought to have known, what the Americans
did not, that no peace could be got through a diplomatic conference
at Paris. They should, in the first place, have secured a real
representation of the popular forces of the British Empire, and in the
second place, a forum where those forces could take effect. Public
opinion had already provided the foundation of such a forum in the
demand for a League of Nations. The proper procedure, obviously, was
to stop hostilities, subject to guarantees, and to set up a League of
Nations that should make peace. It would have taken little longer to
get together than did the diplomatic delegations, and would certainly
have taken no longer in reaching a result. Both its constitution and
its conclusions would probably have been resisted to the verge of
rupture by the French and Italian Governments; but would, with the
moral sanction of the League and with the urgent pressure of the
military situation, have been easily enforced by the British and
Americans. MM. Clemenceau and Tardieu could override Messrs. Lloyd
George and Philip Kerr easily enough, for, after all, the former do
stand for forces, the latter are merely phenomena. They could even
override Messrs. Wilson and Lansing, for though these did represent
real forces, they could not reproduce them in Paris. But mixed French
and Italian delegations of all parties would have offered points of
contact to British and American Liberals and even to German and
Russian Socialists. The cleavages between the various national
interests would have been bridged and an internationalist cement
introduced to counteract the imperialist cleavages. Of course, such a
body would not have elaborated the details of peace in a plenary
debate. It would have proceeded as national Constituent Assemblies
always have done after civil war. It would have debated and approved
general principles for its own permanent constitution and the
resettlement of Europe, and referred them for elaboration to
committees controlling the diplomatic experts.

It will be objected that such a new and untried institution could
never have succeeded where the fine flower of diplomacy failed, or
would have been merely a stalking horse for diplomatic intrigue and
imperialistic interests. But an institution is strong in proportion to
the public powers it has acquired and the public acquiescence in them:
not in proportion to its degree of constitutional development, or the
perfection of its machinery. A British parish council, with its
carefully defined powers, can do little and does nothing. A German
revolutionary communal council could do anything and does a good deal.
The League of Nations would have given the Americans a means of
expressing their moral and neutral policies and of exercising the
pressure that President Wilson would not or could not apply. Even if
the League had not succeeded in imposing respect for his "fourteen
points" on the diplomats, and it might have done so, it would at least
have regulated procedure. We should not have had vital decisions
reached in a few minutes' talk one afternoon, and reversed for some
unknown reason the next, without reference to expert conclusions or
regard for principle and precedent. Also this procedure would have
made it possible to deal with our main obstacles to a permanent peace,
the secret treaties. We could not escape from these national
diplomatic obligations in a diplomatic conference of national
delegates. But we could have got a dispensation from them had they
been referred to a supreme international and super-diplomatic
authority. No doubt this procedure would have affected such questions
as the international status of Germany and Ireland or India. Germany
would have been admitted to the League in time to take part in
arranging its own penalties and we should thereby have got the best
guarantee possible for the permanence of the peace in respect to
Germany. The Peace Treaty would thus have become a compact instead of
a Coercion Act. As to Ireland, it is outside my scope: but as our
national authority avowedly finds reconciliation of the two Irish
factions insoluble, there would seem to be no great harm in trying
what an international authority could do.

On such lines as this, a League of Nations might have been
established. As things are the League is, of course, no more than an
alliance to enforce the imperialist and nationalist decisions of Paris
on conquered races, and to combat revolution. It is a combination of a
Balkan League and a Holy Alliance. The effect of this prostitution of
a public ideal to the profiteering of the Paris conclave has made the
peace as disastrous morally to Europe as was the war materially. The
Treaties have, for a time, Bolshevised Eastern Europe, Balkanised
Central Europe and Bottomleyised Western Europe.

But here we are concerned with the effect on Germany. And if it be
objected that it does not matter what Germany thinks of it, I reply
that the test of the League's utility will be the confidence that it
can inspire in the former enemy States. Unless Germans, Bulgars, and
even Bolsheviks, see in it something more than a League against
themselves, they will not accept its authority and we are back on a
basis of a balance of power.

Our relations with Germany in this respect are especially important.
We went into the war for international ideals--the defence of France
and the abolition of militarism; and, having fought it to a
conclusion, we allowed our rulers to substitute for that
internationalism the worst form of imperialism. Germany went into the
war for imperialist ideals, or, at best, for nationalist ideals; but
after defeat replaced those ideals by an internationalism involving
the acceptance of international control by a League of Nations. That
internationalist point of view is still held by the German people,
though no one would think it from the character of their present
Government, and the tone of their Press.

The internationalist point of view of the German people has so far
failed to find expression for two reasons: one was the pressure of
Allied imperialism, the other the partial failure of the German
Revolution through the innate political incapacity of the people. The
armistice, while nominally suspending hostilities, really continued the
war on national lines. This treaty, while nominally restoring peace,
really continues the war on imperial lines. Under these conditions
German internationalism could scarcely survive except among the working
class, where it was too deeply rooted in the realities of life for any
poison gas from Paris to kill it. But, except among the workmen and
their idealist leaders, the Independent Socialists, the feeling that the
world in general, and Germany in particular, was at the mercy of the
imperialist and nationalist elements among the victors caused the
abandonment of the new protestantism--internationalism, and reversion to
the old orthodoxy--nationalism. This recantation was indeed in response
to intimations from Paris that Germany was expected to renounce the
devil Bolshevism and all its works. That the realisation of the German
Revolution, whether it is the work of a devil or no, is the one and only
protection for Germany against Bolshevism is, of course, beyond the
political penetration of Paris.

The principal force of public opinion created by the sacrifices of the
war expressed itself in the movement for a League of Nations to
guarantee peace. In Germany this movement was especially strong. For
Germany was left without other protection than that which it could get
from such internationalism. Any suggestion that could strengthen the
League or Germany's claim to participate in it was eagerly grasped.

A private suggestion that the German Constitution should contain a
formal recognition of the League and be the first national
constitution to do so, was at once adopted by the very cautious and
conservative Committee. Another from a similar source that the German
proposals for the League should correct the democratic deficiencies of
the Paris project was also adopted. The German scheme for a League
was, indeed, in every respect better than that of the Allies.[I] But
the Paris project and the provisions of the Treaty hopelessly
prejudiced the whole idea of the League with German progressives.
After their publication the clause recognising the precepts of the
League and the provisions of Treaties as the supreme law of the land
disappeared[J] from Art. 4 of the Constitution. The League of Paris
and the Treaty of Versailles are now to be obeyed as "force
majeure"--they are not recognised as German law. And whereas the
League could have secured from Germany a willing acceptance of
obligations that would not only have guaranteed the peace of Europe so
far as the German race was concerned, but would also have made good to
some extent the ruin of the last war, now it is looked upon throughout
Germany as mere cynical camouflage. The German, whether nationalist or
internationalist, listens to American or English preachments about the
League with despair and disgust.

Here is one such opinion from my note book: "I can endure with
patience Germany being robbed of everything that is easily rob-able
and even its being reduced to economic servitude. But what I cannot
stand is the confidence trick of Wilson's 'points' and the camouflage
of the League of Nations. Bismarck in respect of his Emperor and
Bethmann-Hollweg in respect of Belgium both committed a breach of
trust, but they did it under necessity of war. Wilson in his Fourteen
Points and Lord Robert Cecil in the League have done the same in the
name of peace."

Already the internationalism of Germany and Central Europe is under
the pressure of Paris, taking a form almost impossible to reconcile
with the form of this League of Nations. Until the appearance of the
Paris project for the League and the peace conditions, Germany,
whether national or international, was wholeheartedly a supporter of
it. But now it is not too much to say that the League is moribund, not
only in Germany, but in continental Europe generally, as an ideal. Its
place is rapidly being taken by the ideal of an International Council
on a basis of social and industrial representation, instead of that of
a League on a basis of national or territorial representation. Just as
the leaders of the German workmen and the younger Democrats caught at
the theories of Guild Socialism, so now they are turning eagerly to a
new idea, also introduced from England, of an international Soviet
system--an organisation that will be really international because,
instead of being based as is the Wilsonian League on the nationalism
of States, it will be based on the internationalism of trades. That
will have as its sanction an international strike instead of a
national boycott, and as its authority a Central Council of delegates
instead of a Conference of diplomats. This development would have come
in due course anyway, but a successful Wilsonian League might have
delayed it even as the prestige of the House of Commons is delaying
Council government, and as the prestige of the Crown delayed
Parliamentary government itself.

To us Liberals and Labour folk here in England--relieved at getting a
League in any form and ready as we English always are to make the best
of what we've got, however bad--this international Council movement
may seem to be a waste of strength. For it would seem likely to
require the full force of all progressive continental movements to get
the League of Nations put on a democratic basis. But the attitude of
America makes it doubtful whether the League can be so developed as to
do more good than harm. And in any case the movement for an
International Council will proceed concurrently and will help rather
than harm the movement for an International Parliament. Nor will it
encounter the same difficulties. The international organisation of
labour provides a better medium in which to establish an international
institution than does the present international organisation of
governments--the Foreign Offices and Foreign Missions. Moreover, it
should prove as easy to extend a Soviet System or Council Commonwealth
into the international relationship as it is difficult and dangerous
to extend the principle of State Sovereignty and Parliamentary
supremacy there. The Council Commonwealth, with its essentially
international basis, with its democracy of superimposed councils in
constant contact with each other and with the international strike for
sanction, is as sound and safe a foundation for such a superstructure
as the Parliamentary State, with its long-term parliaments, its large
constituencies, its all-dominating national sentiment and its national
blockade or boycott, is unsound. Anyway, the International Industrial
Congress and Executive Council are bound to come, either in
substitution for or supplementary to the League of Nations, just as
the National Council Congress and Central Council are bound to come
either in substitution for or supplementary to the parliamentary
systems. The only question is whether they will come as supplementary
to or in substitution for the League.

As to the sop thrown to the workmen of the world in Section 8 of the
Treaty, with its international labour organisation, the German
workmen, at least, have no use for it. The revolutionaries with their
Independent leaders would not probably co-operate at all in the
proceedings at Washington now beginning. The Trades Unionists and
Social-Democrats have done so, but under no illusions as to results. A
criticism of their organ, _Vorwärts_, points out that this section is
inspired by as profound a distrust of the Proletariat as the rest of
the Treaty shows of Prussia; and that the provisions as to submission
of agenda some months before, as to veto by the Governments except
when there is a two-thirds majority, while the workmen's
representation is no more than a fourth, and as to enforcing
decisions, deprive the whole section of most of its value. The
_Vorwärts_, representing the general point of view now dominant in
Germany and the point of view which but for other influences would
have given the most sympathetic supporters to such procedure as that
proposed, now damns it as humbug.

But whatever the form of the eventual international institution may
be, one fact must be faced. We have not yet made peace with Germany.
If the Paris treaties with Germany, Austria and Bulgaria have appeased
the angry passions excited by war and finally discredited secret
diplomacy, they will have fulfilled a function and cleared the road
for peace. The armistice demands were the first stage to peace--these
diplomatic damnifications the second. What will be the third and last?

FOOTNOTES:

[H] This telegram had, I believe, a curious backlash, rather
illustrative of the times in Germany. A countess with political
ambitions, who had set up an Independent salon, had had that Friday her
usual "evening," at which I had looked in for a few minutes. On Monday
she was arrested and banished to a provincial townlet for supplying
false information to a foreign correspondent. Needless to say, one did
not need a countess to tell one that Germany would sign in its collapsed
condition.

[I] In the German project all signatories of the Hague Convention as
well as the new States arisen since the war were admitted. Instead of
all authority being assigned to an Executive Council of nine in which
the victorious Great Powers reserved themselves a majority of five, the
remaining four being elected by smaller States, the German project had
the Executive Council elected by a Congress of States, corresponding to
the Assembly of Delegates in the Paris project. It also provided a World
Parliament of parliamentary delegations. The German project is also more
drastic in its provisions for mediation, arbitration, and protection of
minorities. It approaches the functions of the League for international
social legislation in a much more liberal and constructive spirit.

[J] This article of the Constitution had been amended by the addition of
the words in italics: "The generally accepted principles of
international law _the pronouncements of the League of Nations and the
provisions of Treaties_ have binding force as German Constitutional
Law." It has now been amended back by their omission.




CHAPTER VII

THE CONSTITUTION


Looking at the new German Constitution, without troubling about its
inner meanings, and comparing it with the Constitution of 1871, we are
struck at once by the very considerable advance it represents in
democratic development. One need not be a constitutional lawyer to
assert with confidence that this is the most democratic Constitution
possessed by any of the principal European peoples, and to add that it
seems to have avoided many of the mistakes that have been marked in
other Republican Constitutions, whether American, French, Portuguese
or Russian. The President's powers, for example, and the relation of
the Ministry to Parliament suggest that Dr. Preuss, the constitutional
jurist responsible for its drafting and elaboration, had studied
foreign constitutional history with a Prussian thoroughness and a
Hebrew perspicacity.

But a closer study of this Constitution will give us a different view
of it. And this view will depend on whether we study it in the light
of its development from the Revolution or of its difference from the
_ancien régime_. If we compare it with the principles of the
revolution we shall be tempted to condemn and reject it, like the
German Revolution, as mere camouflaged reaction. It would certainly
have been a very different document had it been produced in the first
weeks of November. The Revolution, in so far as it had a
constitutional conception at all, contemplated a "Räte system" (that
is a Council Government), which should secure political power to the
proletariat under a Central Committee, on the Russian model. If it had
admitted Parliamentary institutions at all they would only have been
subordinate to Council control. As to any survival of the old State
sovereignties, they were looked on as having disappeared with the
State dynasties from which they had originated. Thus the Erfurt
proclamation of the Thuringian States on December 10th, 1918, proposed
that the motley medley of those petty principalities be unified into
one administrative department of a centralised Republic.

But this revolutionary impetus did not last. As power relapsed to the
upper and middle classes particularism reappeared. As the flood tide
of revolution drained back, the old channels and watersheds appeared
again. Every crisis in modern German history, 1848, 1866 and 1870, had
been in the main a movement towards national unity that eventually
failed in great measure owing to peculiarities of German character and
of Germany's circumstances. And this last Revolution of 1918 was to a
large extent the same; but whereas the previous movements had been
thwarted by Conservative ideals and institutions, and by the citadels
of the past, this movement was most embarrassed by its association
with Communist ideals and innovations, like the Councils. So much
indeed was this national and centralising factor of the Revolution
obscured by the international and socialising feature of it that, at
the election of the Constitutional Assembly, such questions as to
whether the Constitution should be that of a centralised Republic,
like France, or a coalition of Republics, like Switzerland, never came
before the public at all.

Public opinion was too much occupied with the Revolution in its effect
on private life and property, on food and peace, to consider it in its
character as another chapter in the history of German unity. The
result of the election, however, temporarily settled the issue
against centralisation by splitting the Socialist party, and making
the moderate Socialist Government dependent on the support of clerical
and sectional interests. The constructive impetus of the Revolution
was lost and Constitution-making became once more, as on previous
occasions, a complicated negotiation with the lesser States.

But the Revolution had at least succeeded in giving the Constitution a
good start towards centralisation by having a draft prepared, by a
Committee under Dr. Preuss, then Secretary of State for the Interior
in the provisional Government. This first draft--a shapeless makeshift
affair--nevertheless established certain principles of national unity
which eventually survived all attacks on them. And a tactical success
was scored at once by publishing this draft simultaneously with the
decision of the Constituent Assembly, on the 21st of January. But that
was as far as the matter could be carried without calling the States
into consultation, and a conference of their representatives met in
Berlin on January 24th. At this Conference, or rather in the special
train on the way to it, the particularist opposition declared itself.
And this, not only where it might have been expected, in the clerical,
liberal and conservative parties, but among socialists themselves.
This opposition of southern socialists followed the line of an old
factious schism in the Social Democratic party that had declared
itself at the Nürnberg Conference, and was headed by Kurt Eisner, the
leading revolutionary and real ruler of Bavaria. Kurt Eisner was not
only opposed to Prussia on political but on personal grounds, having
shaken the dust of Berlin off his feet some years before. Under his
leadership the centralised Republic of Preuss was gradually remodelled
into a decentralised Federation of Republics. And it looked, at one
time, as though the failure of the Paulskirche Assembly was to be
repeated, and a movement towards German unity and social liberty was
to relapse and recoil into reaction. Fortunately there has been to-day
no Bismarck to profit by the opportunity given by the Southern
particularists.[K]

It is curious to note how the resignation of the Constituent States
changes in the successive drafts of the Constitution. First they
appear as "Member States" (_glied Staaten_), then as "Free States,"
finally as "Countries" (_Lander_). Again, we find the Federal Body or
Senate, representing these States, as States, appearing first as a
State Committee (_Staaten Auschuss_), then as a State House (_Staaten
Haus_) sharing sovereignty with a _Volks Haus_ or Commons and
combining with it to form the Reichstag, and finally as a Council of
the Realm (_Reichsrat_) with merely a suspensory veto over the
Reichstag. These changes of nomenclature suggest a reaction into
decentralisation followed by a recoil back into centralisation. The
successive drafts of this Constitution are indeed documents of intense
interest to a student of German political development and of
revolution in general. They mark stages in a historic movement that is
scarcely elsewhere recorded; if only because its course was so rapid
that it accomplished in weeks what would normally have taken years,
and because post-war conditions cut it off from competent observation.
But, by comparing the various drafts of the Constitution, we see how a
proletarian revolution starting in Prussia in favour of a centralised
consolidated Republic gradually yielded to a reaction favouring
Southern particularism, which converted the Constitution into a
decentralised federation of Republics. Then, with the capture of the
Saxon and Bavarian States, by the revolutionary Council movement and
their collapse under Prussian military occupation, came the final
phase in which centralisation recovered most of its lost ground. The
question is whether this ground has been recovered for reaction or for
revolution.

This raises the question, all important for our purpose, as to the
position of Prussian reaction under the new Constitution. Prussia as a
political Power stands to us for Prussianism, and Prussianism
represents the political point of view that we have been fighting in
this war.

In the past Prussia dominated Germany through the Dynasty and the
ruling class. Prussia was a force making for reaction, owing to its
antiquated suffrage and constitution and to the activities of its
upper and middle classes. Prussia still dominates the German Republic
much as England would dominate in a British Federation. But it is not
the same Prussia. If Prussia is still the citadel of reaction it is
also the centre of revolution. The fight between the two is not yet
fought out, but if, as seems probable, neither wins, the result will
be that the Prussian influence in new Germany will be a somewhat
colourless compromise, what we should call Liberalism.

If this is so, and the course of recent events tends to confirm a
conjecture made soon after my arrival in Germany, then a
centralisation that tends to maintain Prussian hegemony in Germany is
not in principle objectionable. It remains to be seen whether the
Constitution as now recentralised offers opportunities to a
recrudescence of Prussianism in the bad sense.

The position of Prussia, having four-sevenths of the population, an even
larger proportion of the ruling class and of the military caste, also
the capital and the civil service, was the main difficulty of the
Constitution-makers. The revolutionary solution was at first the
partition of Prussia, and it seemed feasible enough. Prussian unity had
centred more than that of any other German State in the Crown; and as
the Prussian Revolution had three main distinct regions, not very
different from the old racial divisions, a division of the State into
three seemed as easy as expedient. Dr. Preuss and constitutional jurists
of all parties stood in favour of such partition. At the same time, if
Prussia were to be partitioned, obviously a rearrangement of the other
States might be attempted, so as to give the new German Constitution
that uniformity and precision so precious to the German mind.
Accordingly, all manner of fancy schemes were put forward by which the
Reich was divided geographically, racially, religiously, economically,
and even industrially. But all the time the Revolution, that alone
could have carried through any such reconstruction, was being thwarted
and throttled, so that none of these schemes became practical politics.
The revolutionary impetus that the Constitution-makers could use for the
realisation of their reconstructive ideals proved far too weak. There
were, however, plenty of interested efforts to abolish the anomalies and
absurdities of the old dynastic frontiers. Thus Hamburg merchants wished
to annex Bremen; Brunswick revolutionaries wished to annex Anhalt;
Coburg councils declared their independence of Gotha councils; Waldeck
burghers clamoured for release from the tyranny of Pyrmont. But when it
came to effecting any such change, in no case was there sufficient
support. It would indeed have been easier to redivide Germany on
altogether new lines than to partition up and patch together the old
States. Dr. Preuss was, at a very early stage, obliged to restrict
himself to laying down principles for procedure which should make
subsequent rearrangements as easy as possible; and he was eventually
obliged to content himself with putting, as he himself said, the least
possible obstacle in the way of change.

The whole policy of partitioning Prussia very soon broke down before a
Prussian, national unity that was the growth of centuries. This
national sentiment expressed itself in violent opposition not only
from the Prussian ruling class, to whom Prussian unity was a necessary
condition for a monarchical and militarist reaction, but also to the
Prussian proletariat, who considered it a necessary condition for the
success of the Revolution. Nor, oddly enough, was it favoured even by
the Southern and Catholic interest who in the past had been most
jealous of Prussia. For they argued that if Prussia were reduced to
provincial departments, their own State rights would not remain
unrestricted. And State right had become all the more precious to the
clerical parties since revolution had threatened them both from above
and below, from a Socialist Central Government above and from
Communist Council Governments below. Partition had therefore to be
abandoned and the difficulty of Prussian preponderance was solved by
an arbitrary reduction of Prussian representation, as in the
Constitution of 1871. In the old Bundesrat Prussia was represented by
17 votes out of 61 (counting Alsace-Lorraine). Art. 61 of the present
Constitution restricts Prussia to two-fifths of the total votes,
having raised the proportion from one-third in the previous drafts.
That is, Prussia used to have rather more than a quarter, and now has
rather more than a third of the votes in the Federal body.

This might look like a reaction into Prussianism; but only until the
functions of this Federal Body are examined. Sovereignty, under the
old Constitution, resided in the dynasties, and the old Bundesrat was
a council of diplomatic delegates, comparable to the Supreme Council
at Paris. These delegates, as representatives of the Crown,
intervened, not only in legislative but even in administrative
matters, such as appointments. Moreover, in this Council, the Prussian
representatives had a privileged position, as they received their
instructions from the Prussian Government in which the Imperial
Chancellor was Premier. In the first drafts of the Constitution we
find the sovereignty divided between representatives of the State and
representatives of the people. Thus the Staatenhaus and Volkshaus
combine to make the sovereign Reichstag. But in the present
Constitution, all sovereignty expressly resides in the popular
Chamber, the Reichstag. The Reichsrat becomes no more than a sort of
Imperial Conference with defined and carefully delimited
constitutional powers; and, in the Reichsrat, Prussia has no
privileged position whatever.

The great strength of Prussianism was in the Prussian Constitution and
in the Crown. But Art. 17 now prescribes that every State must have a
Constitution as a Free State of a democratic character. And as to the
Crown, Prussia has not the same relations to the President as it had
to the Emperor. The Kaiser was primarily King of Prussia by right
divine, the President is primarily executive of Germany by popular
election.[L] Moreover, under the old _régime_, the Kaiser's Chancellor
was also Prussian Premier. The Republic's Chancellor has nothing to
say to Prussia; he and the Ministers form a Federal Cabinet
responsible to the Reichstag.

And, if we carry this comparison into other political regions, we find
the same result; that Prussianism and Junkerism have lost their
vantage grounds and have been put under democratic control.

In Foreign Affairs the influence of Prussia was, as we have cause to
know, especially fatal to Germany and to Europe. But that is now at an
end. The German Constitution not only affords the usual guarantees of
Parliamentary Government for a democratic foreign policy, but guards
the nation against defects in those guarantees that have been found
dangerous even in our own Constitution. Two innovations have for years
been urged by reformers in our own country, the institution of a
permanent parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, and the
submission of important treaties, as well as of declaration of war, to
Parliament. Had Germany had these safeguards at the time of the war
there would have been no war. Had we had them then we should now have
peace. Articles 35 and 45 of the German Constitution are worthy of our
careful consideration.

The financial relationship between States and the Central Government
is always a difficult matter to arrange. If the Federal Government is
dependent on subsidies from the States, it can have no strength, nor
even any real democratic basis. If the States depend on the Central
Government, they have no vitality and become in time mere
administrative departments. Under the old Constitution there was no
clear principle, but the fiscal authority resided nominally in the
States, while the Reich really by all manner of devices encroached on
this autonomy. Now there is a clear general principle that the States
must content themselves with such sources of revenue as are left to
them by the Reich. And we certainly cannot criticise a centralisation
which is indispensable to Germany in the enormous effort it must make
to meet the financial obligations imposed on it by the Treaty of
Versailles. Moreover, Prussia can no longer dominate Germany
financially and economically as before. Prussia's economic
preponderance has been greatly reduced by the loss of Lorraine, the
Saar, and Silesia. In communications, too, Prussia can no longer give
the lead and lay down the law to the lesser States; for communications
come under federal control. Within two years railroads, posts and
telegraphs and canals are transferred to the Reich.

In the region of public welfare we find that the new German
Constitution is more satisfactory than might have been expected from
the conditions of its genesis. It meets adequately two main requisites
for progress; the formulation of the general principles inspiring the
practical provisions of recent progressive legislation, and the
attribution of responsibility for further legislative development of
such principles. Thus, besides establishment of equality of sexes, we
find such principles as that "Marriage is established on the equality
of the sexes." "Families with numerous children are entitled to
equitable and equalising treatment." "Motherhood is entitled to
protection of and provision by the State" (Art. 19). Illegitimate
children are to have "similar conditions for their corporal, spiritual
and social development" (Art. 121), "Childhood is to be protected
against exploitation" (Art. 122), and so forth. While all these
questions are attributed to the Reichstag (Art. 7, § 7).

The same approbation can safely be accorded to the chapter on public
work. The economic purpose of society is to "guarantee to all an
existence proper to men." "Property has its obligations, and its use
must also serve the common good." While these _voeux pieux_ are given
more definite application in provisions for housing and contributory
insurance, and in recognition of "nationalisation" in Art. 156.
Moreover, these principles are, to some extent, guaranteed by the
previously discussed recognition of Industrial Councils in Art. 165,
which provides a measure of "socialisation," and by the specific
recognition of socialisation as a principle in Art. 7, § 13.

When we come to the all-important region of education, the conditions
of compromise in which the Constitution took shape have prevented the
establishment of any very clear principle or very cut and dried
procedure. This was indeed one of the most contentious chapters of
which 'clericalism' contested every inch. The Democrats and Dr. Preuss
had originally introduced a uniform and secular system; but they and
the Social-Democrats, in the abstention of the Independents, were
unable to carry this through against the Clerical Centrum. The
resultant compromise is not unlike that now prevailing in England. It
may work but it satisfies nobody.

And finally coming to the army the effect of the success secured by
the centralising party is even more questionable. The Revolution
originally contemplated merely a militia on the Swiss model, under
Federal control. The first result of reaction was to substitute a
professional and highly paid force, the Frei-Corps, under Prussian
command and control. The consequence of this was that the Southern
States insisted on retaining their separate military systems, and
these were duly recognised in the early drafts of the Constitution, to
the great disgust of nationalists and militarists. But then came the
proclamation of Räte-Republics in Saxony and Bavaria, and their
suppression by Prussian Frei-Corps with some assistance from
Würtemberg and Baden. This re-established, _de facto_, a military
predominance of Prussia which enabled the Prussian jurists to replace
military matters under the Federal Government. Art. 79 now gives
complete authority to the Minister of Defence; and the special
military autonomies of Bavaria and other States, reserved in previous
drafts, disappear. But, so long as the Frei-Corps continue, with their
Prussian organisation and officers, a Federal army is, for the
present, at least, nothing else than a Prussian army. Though Noske is
the Minister of Defence, not Minister of War, as he is sometimes
called, and is a member of a Federal Cabinet and not, as before, a
Prussian Minister, and though the Eden Hotel clique has been
transferred to the Ministry of Defence--yet the armed forces of the
Republic are, for the present, the armed forces of Prussia.

This is, however, a transition stage. The Prussian officer is the
creation of conditions that no longer exist to-day, and the Frei-Corps
a creation of conditions that will not exist to-morrow. When Germany
again gets peace, Prussia will lose a predominance that it owes to
past conditions, but not to the Constitution.

It is indeed in its efficiency as a bond between the past and the
future that the Constitution must be judged; as a bond that will
reduce revolution to rapid evolution. Dr. Preuss, its author, claims
no more for it than that it will not act as a bar to any normal and
natural growth. But it will have to do more than this. It must serve
as a bridge by which Germany can safely pass over the immense gulf
that separates the Germany of yesterday from the Germany of to-morrow;
the Germany of the Courts of Potsdam and of Pumpernickel, from the
Germany of the Executive Councils of Berlin and Brunswick. It is a
formidable span for any bridge, and, when we look at this Constitution
and find one abutment of it in Article 65 consecrating an
ultra-mediæval particularism, and the other abutment in Article 165
"anchoring" the ultra-modern forms of industrial councils, we may
wonder whether the intervening structure will ever stand the strain.
Can the constitutional compromise of Dr. Preuss ever safely convey
seventy million people from government by the divine right of princes
to government by industrial representation? Even if it does not, and
this Constitution is swept away by a second flood-tide of revolution,
it will have served a purpose. It will have finally exorcised the
constitutional incubus of northern Prussianism and southern
particularism. The vague and dangerous powers of Prussian imperial
sovereignty and the less dangerous but equally disabling national
sovereignties of the Principalities have been swept away. Art. 11 of
the Constitution establishes the Commonwealth as a Republic and
assigns its sovereignty to the people.[M] Moreover, Art. 178 repeals
the Constitution of 1871, while Art. 181 puts the Constitution in
force on the authority of the National Assembly alone, thereby finally
ending the claim put forward at first by Bavaria that it should be
ratified by the Landtag.

The difference between the Constitution of 1919 and that of 1871 can
indeed best be seen at a glance by comparing their preambles. Here is
that of 1871. "H.M. the King of Prussia in the name of the North
German Confederation, H.M. the King of Bavaria, H.M. the King of
Würtemberg, H.R.H. the Grand Duke of Baden and H.R.H. the Grand Duke
of Hesse and by Rhine, for those parts of the Grand Dukedom of Hesse
South of the Rhine, conclude a perpetual confederation."

Compare that with the preamble of this Constitution. "The German
people, united in its races, and inspired by the will to restore and
reinforce its Realm in liberty and equity, to ensure peace, both
inward and outward, and to further social progress, has accorded
itself this Constitution."

It only remains therefore, for Europe and England to recognise this
new departure and to ratify it by admitting Germany to the League of
Nations. And even if this new Constitution be held to be no more than
new wine in old bottles and new patches on an old garment, that is no
reason why Germany should not be included in the League as at present
conceived and constituted.

FOOTNOTES:

[K] Delbrück, the leader of the Right, who defended Bismarck's
Constitution in the Assembly against the supporters of the present
Constitution, ignored the fundamental difference caused by the fall of
the dynasties. Even Bismarck could not have succeeded had he not had the
King of Prussia, the Emperor of Austria and the Princes of Germany on
which to build his structure.

[L] It was at first proposed, when decentralisation was at its
strongest, that each State should have its own President, and that the
Reichs President and Prussian President should be kept separate. But
there is as yet no Prussian President, nor does there seem likely to be
one.

[M] The sovereignty of the Southern States was always a danger to German
unity, as in the last crisis when great efforts were made by France to
start secession movements in the South and West. The diplomatic right of
representation was also an embarrassment in every crisis; as when a
Bavarian representative suddenly appeared at Brest-Litovsk in the high
tide of reaction, or again at Berne in the height of the Revolution.




APPENDIX

THE GERMAN CONSTITUTION


INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Before the revolution of 9 November, 1918, the Constitution in force
was that of 16 April, 1871--the "Constitution of the German Reich,"
which had replaced the "Constitution of the German Bund" of November,
1870. But the following Constitution has less in common with these
later Constitutions, based on alliances between Sovereign Princes,
than with the abortive "Constitution of the German Reich" of 28 March,
1849, which embodied the nationalist and democratic revolution of
1848.

The November revolution brought to power a provisional Government--the
Council of People's Commissaries--which in its first proclamation of
12 November, 1918, announced that the future Constitution would be
framed by a National Assembly elected by universal suffrage and
proportional representation. Under electoral regulations of 30
November, 1918, elections were held on 19 January, 1919.

The National Assembly met in Weimar on 6 February, 1919, and on 10
February voted the Provisional Constitution; whereupon the Council of
Commissaries resigned their authority to the Assembly. This
Constitution gave the Assembly sole power to vote the Constitution;
but its provisions could only be submitted with consent of a "State
Committee" of representatives of the "Free States." This provisional
Constitution was supplemented by an "Interim Act" of 4 March, which
maintained in force previous legislation of the Reich and decrees of
the Provisional Government.

The drafting of the Constitution was entrusted to Dr. Hugo Preuss,
Professor of Public Law in the Commercial University of Berlin,
Secretary of the Interior in the Provisional Government, and Minister
of the Interior in the first Coalition Government. The Democratic
Party, of which he is a member, having left the Coalition on the
question of signature of the Treaty of Versailles, Dr. Preuss retained
responsibility for the passage of the Constitution as Special
Commissioner.

The first draft of the Constitution was published in January and was
submitted to the Assembly on 21 February. It was introduced by Preuss
with lengthy expositions in sessions on 28 February and 3 and 4 March,
and thereafter submitted to a Committee of twenty-eight under the
Presidency of the deputy Conrad Haussmann. After being completely
recast in Committee it was debated in second reading 2-22 July; when
the status of the Free States, the education question, and the
recognition of industrial Councils were especially contested and
eventually compromised. The third reading, 29-31 July, ended in its
being voted by 262 to 75, the minority consisting of the Conservatives
and the Independent Socialists.


CONSTITUTION OF THE GERMAN REALM

The German people united in its every branch and inspired by the
determination to renew and establish the Realm in liberty and justice,
to ensure peace at home and abroad, and to further social progress,
has given itself this Constitution.


FIRST PART

THE REALM: ITS ORGANISATION AND FUNCTIONS


SECTION I

REALM AND LANDS


ARTICLE 1.

The German Realm is a Republic.[1]

Constitutional power proceeds from the people.[2]


ARTICLE 2.

The territory of the Realm consists of the territories of the German
Lands.[3] Other territories may be incorporated in the Realm by an act
of the Realm, if their populations should so desire in virtue of the
right of self-determination.


ARTICLE 3.

The colours of the Realm are black-red-gold. The commercial flag is
black-white-red with the national colours in the inner upper
corner.[4]


ARTICLE 4.

The generally recognised rules of international law are held to be
integral and obligatory parts of the Law of the German Realm.[5]


ARTICLE 5.

Constitutional power shall be exercised, in matters pertaining to the
Realm, by the Constitutional Bodies of the Realm on the basis of the
constitution of the Realm, in matters pertaining to the Lands, by the
constitutional bodies of the Lands on the basis of the constitutions
of the Lands.


ARTICLE 6.

The Realm has exclusive legislative authority in:--

(1) Foreign relations.[6]

(2) Colonial affairs.[7]

(3) Nationality, freedom of domicile, immigration and emigration,
extradition.

(4) National defence.[8]

(5) Currency.

(6) Tariffs, and the Customs and Commercial Union and freedom of
Trade.

(7) Posts and telegraphs, including telephones.[9]


ARTICLE 7.

The Realm has legislative authority in the following subjects:--

(1) Citizenship.

(2) The criminal code.

(3) Judicial procedure, including the execution of justice; further,
official co-operation between public authorities.

(4) Passports and police supervision of aliens.

(5) Poor relief and vagrancy.

(6) The Press, the right of association, the right of meeting.

(7) Population questions, care of mothers, infants, children, and
young persons.

(8) Public health, veterinary regulations, and protection of plants
against disease and pests.

(9) The right to work, insurance and protection of workers and
employees, and employment exchange.

(10) The institution of vocational associations extending over the
Realm.

(11) The care of discharged soldiers and their dependants.

(12) The right of expropriation.

(13) Socialisation of natural resources and of economic enterprises,
further the manufacture, production, distribution, and price
regulation of economic commodities for general use.[10]

(14) The commercial code, weights and measures, the issue of paper
money, banking, and stock exchange regulations.

(15) Dealings in foodstuffs and food luxuries, and also in essential
commodities of daily use.

(16) Industry and mining.

(17) Insurance.

(18) Merchant shipping, high-sea and coastwise fishing.

(19) Railways, canal traffic, motor traffic by land, sea, and air, and
the construction of roads serving general traffic and national
defence.[11]

(20) Theatres and cinemas.


ARTICLE 8.[12]

The Realm has further the right of legislating as to taxation and
other revenues, in so far as they are wholly or partially appropriated
to its purposes. Should the Realm appropriate taxes or other revenues
hitherto assigned to the Lands, it must keep in view the proper
requirements of the Lands.


ARTICLE 9.

The Realm has the right to legislate on the following subjects, or, if
and when it is necessary to issue uniform regulations:--

(1) Social welfare work.

(2) Protection of public order and public safety.


ARTICLE 10.[13]

The Realm can by Act, frame general principles regulating:--

(1) Rights and responsibilities of religious communities.

(2) Education, including all higher education and scientific
libraries.

(3) Rights of the officials of all public bodies.

(4) Right to the land, land distribution, land settlement and small
holdings, the law of entail, housing, and distribution of the
population.

(5) Burial of the dead.


ARTICLE 11.

The Realm can by way of legislation, frame general principles
concerning the validity and collection of taxes levied by the Lands
to protect important interests of society and prevent:--

(1) Prejudice to the revenues or commercial relations of the Realm.

(2) Levies on public communications or institutions if excessive or
such as to interfere with communication.

(3) Where, in the course of traffic between the different Federal
States or provinces, commodities entering a certain State suffer
financial disabilities as compared with the same class of commodity
manufactured in such State.

(4) In order to exclude export premiums or to safeguard important
social interests.


ARTICLE 12.

As long as, and in so far as, the Realm makes no use of its rights of
legislation, the Lands retain the right of legislating. This does not
apply to legislation which belongs to the Realm exclusively.

The Government of the Realm has the right of veto against any
legislation of the Lands which affects the provisions of Number 13 of
Article 7, in so far as the interests of the whole community of the
Realm are thereby affected.


ARTICLE 13.

Law of the Realm prevails against law of the Lands.

Should any doubt or difficulty arise as to whether an act of the Land
legislature is compatible with the law of the Realm, the competent
authorities of the Realm or Land may appeal to the decision of a
Supreme National Court of Judicature; as may be subsequently
determined by an act of the Realm.


ARTICLE 14.

Acts of the Realm are administered by authorities of the Lands except
in so far as may be otherwise determined by acts of the Realm.


ARTICLE 15.

The Government of the Realm has the right of supervision over those
matters in which it has the right of legislation.

The Government of the Realm may lay down general directions where acts
of the Realm are administered by the authorities of the Lands. It may
send commissioners to the authorities of the Lands, and with their
concurrence to subordinate authorities in order to supervise the
execution of the acts of the Realm.

The Land Governments are bound to remedy, on demand of the Government
of the Realm, any deficiencies which may have appeared in the course
of executing the acts of the Realm. In cases of dispute, both National
Government of the Realm and Governments of the Lands may appeal to the
decision of a Supreme Court of Judicature, except where an act of the
Realm declares another court to be competent.


ARTICLE 16.

Officials directly charged with administrative affairs of the Realm in
any Land shall, as a rule, be citizens of that Land. Officials,
employees, and workers in the employ of the Realm shall, if they so
desire, be employed within their home Land, in so far as this is
possible, and in so far as the requirements of the service or of their
training are not prejudiced.


ARTICLE 17.

Every Land must have a liberal constitution.[14] The Representative
Body must be elected by universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage
by all nationals of either sex, on the system of proportional
representation.[15] The Government of the Lands must have the
confidence of the Representative Body.[16]

The principles laid down for the election of the Representative Body
apply also to the elections to Local Bodies. Nevertheless, Land
legislation may require, as an elector's qualification, domicile
within the locality not exceeding one year.[17]


ARTICLE 18.[18]

The division of the Realm into Lands shall have in view the highest
economic and cultural progress of the People, while paying all
possible regard to the wishes of the population affected. An act of
the Realm in the form of a constitutional amendment is required for
any modification of the frontiers of Federal States, or for the
creation of new Lands within the Realm.

Where the Lands directly affected consent, a simple Act of the Realm
shall suffice.

A simple act of the Realm shall further suffice where one of the Lands
affected does not consent, but where the alteration of a frontier or
the creation of a new Land is demanded by the wishes of the population
and there is an overwhelming national interest in favour of it.

The wishes of the population shall be ascertained by means of a
plebiscite. The Government of the Realm shall order a plebiscite to
take place if one-third of the total number of those who have a vote
for the Reichstag, living within the territory affected, demand it.

Three-fifths of the votes recorded, and at least a majority of the
total number of electors, are necessary to determine any alteration of
frontier or the foundation of a new Land. Even where there is only
question of separating part of a Prussian county or of a Bavarian
district, or of the corresponding divisions in any other Land, the
wishes of the population inhabiting the whole district affected must
be ascertained. Should there be no regional relationship between the
portion to be disconnected and the whole district, a special act of
the Realm may declare the wishes of the portion which is to be
disconnected to be sufficient.

When the wishes of the population have been ascertained, the
Government of the Realm shall embody them in an act for decision by
the Reichstag.

Should any dispute arise on the occasion of a union or a separation of
territory in respect of property claims, the decision shall lie with
the Supreme National Court of Judicature of the whole Realm on appeal
of either party.


ARTICLE 19.

Should a constitutional dispute arise within a Land, for deciding
which there is no competent court, or should a dispute of a public
nature arise between Lands or between the Realm and a Land, either of
the disputing parties may appeal, unless another court of the Realm is
competent, to the Supreme National Court of Judicature, which shall
decide. Execution of the decision of the Supreme Court of Judicature
shall lie with the President of the Realm.


SECTION II

THE REICHSTAG


ARTICLE 20.[19]

The Reichstag is composed of the deputies of the German people.


ARTICLE 21.

The deputies are representatives of the whole people. They are subject
to their conscience only and are not bound by instructions.


ARTICLE 22.

The deputies shall be elected by universal, equal, direct, and secret
suffrage by those of either sex over twenty years of age, on the
principles of proportional representation. The day of the election
must be a Sunday or public holiday. An electoral law of the Realm
shall lay down further detailed regulations.


ARTICLE 23.

The Reichstag shall be elected for four years. New elections must take
place at latest within sixty days after the expiration of its term of
office. The Reichstag must hold its first meeting at latest on the
thirtieth day after election.

ARTICLE 24.

The Reichstag shall meet on the first Wednesday of November in every
year at the seat of the Government. The President of the Reichstag is
bound to call it together at an earlier date if the President of the
Realm, or at least one-third of the deputies, demand it.

The Reichstag determines the date of the close of its session and the
date of its reassembly.


ARTICLE 25.[20]

The President of the Realm has power to dissolve the Reichstag, but
may only do so once on the same ground.

New elections must be held at latest on the sixtieth day after the
dissolution.


ARTICLE 26.

The Reichstag shall choose its own President, Vice-President, and
Secretaries. It shall regulate its own procedure.


ARTICLE 27.

The business of the House between two sessions or between two election
periods shall be conducted by the President of the Reichstag and the
Vice-President holding office during the preceding session.


ARTICLE 28.

Disciplinary and police powers within the Reichstag building pertain
to the President of the Reichstag. He also has the administration of
the House. He has control of the income and expenditure of the House
within the limits laid down by the national budget, and he represents
the House in all the legal proceedings and legal business involved in
its administration.


ARTICLE 29.

The sittings of the Reichstag are public. The public may be excluded
on the demand of fifty deputies and by a two-thirds majority vote.


ARTICLE 30.

True reports of the proceedings at the public sittings of the
Reichstag, of the proceedings at a Landtag, of the proceedings at
Committees of the Reichstag or Landtag, are privileged matter.


ARTICLE 31.

A Court of Inquiry into election proceedings shall be formed in
connection with the Reichstag. Such Court shall also decide whether
any deputy has forfeited his mandate.

The Court of Inquiry into election proceedings shall be formed of
members of the Reichstag, who shall be elected by the Reichstag for
the duration of the electoral period, and further of members of the
Supreme Administrative Court, who shall be nominated by the President
of the Realm on the suggestion of the Presiding officers of this
Court.

The Court of Inquiry into election proceedings shall pronounce
judgment in public and oral session through three members of the
Reichstag, and two legal members.

Apart from inquiries actually conducted before the Court of Inquiry,
proceedings may be taken before an officer of the Realm appointed by
the President of the Realm. Further, procedure shall be determined by
the Court of Inquiry.


ARTICLE 32.

A resolution of the Reichstag requires a simple majority of votes,
except where some other proportion of votes is laid down by the
constitution. The Standing Orders of the Reichstag may admit
exceptions to this rule in the case of elections carried out by the
Reichstag.

The Standing Order shall regulate all questions of the validity of
resolutions.


ARTICLE 33.

The Reichstag and its Committees of the Reichstag are entitled to
demand the presence of the Chancellor or of any other Minister of the
Realm. The Chancellor, the Ministers, and their deputies have access
to the sittings of the Reichstag and to the sittings of the Committees
of the Reichstag. The Lands are entitled to send plenipotentiaries to
these sittings who shall submit the views of their Government on the
question under discussion.

The representatives of the Lands may demand to be heard during the
discussion; the representatives of the Government of the Realm may do
so under suspension if necessary of the Orders of the Day.

Such representatives are subject to the rulings of the Chair.


ARTICLE 34.[21]

The Reichstag may set up Committees of Inquiry: it must do so if
one-fifth of the members demand it. Such Committees shall in open
session inquire into such evidence as they consider necessary, or the
petitioners consider necessary. The public may be excluded by
resolution of a two-thirds majority of the Committee of Inquiry. The
Standing Orders shall regulate the procedure of the Committee and
determine the number of its members.

The Courts and the Civil Service must submit any evidence demanded by
these Committees; the Committees may demand to see their records.

The regulations of the Criminal Code apply to the taking of evidence
by the Committees or by such authorities as they have instructed;
nevertheless, the secrecy of the post office, of the letter,
telegraph, and telephone services remains unaffected.


ARTICLE 35.[22]

The Reichstag shall appoint a Permanent Committee for Foreign Affairs;
which Committee may sit during the recess, or after the election
period has come to an end, or after the dissolution until the meeting
of the new Reichstag. The sittings of such Committee are not public,
unless the Committee itself decides on publicity by a two-thirds
majority.

The Reichstag shall further appoint a Permanent Committee for the
Protection of the Rights of the People's Representatives against the
Government of the Realm for those periods during which it is out of
session, and for the period following the termination of an election
period.

Such Committees have the same rights as the Committees of Inquiry.


ARTICLE 36.

No member of the Reichstag or of a Landtag may at any time be made
subject to judicial or administrative penalty, or may be made
responsible outside the House, on account of his vote or on account of
any utterances made in virtue of his office as deputy.


ARTICLE 37.

No member of the Reichstag or of a Landtag may, without the consent of
the House of which he is a member, be arrested or subjected to
examination, while the House is in session, on account of any act for
which criminal proceedings are threatened unless and except he have
been arrested while committing the said act or at latest in the course
of the following day.

A like consent is necessary for every other restriction of personal
liberty calculated to obstruct a deputy in the free exercise of his
office.

The Reichstag or a Landtag may require any criminal proceedings, any
arrest, or any other restriction placed on the personal liberty of one
of its members to be suspended for the duration of the session.


ARTICLE 38.

The members of the Reichstag and of the Landtags are entitled to
refuse their evidence, both as to the identity of persons who have
made communications to them in their capacity as deputies, and as to
the nature of these communications themselves. With regard to the
seizure of documents their position is further identical with that of
persons who have the legal right of refusing evidence.

A search or seizure of documents may not take place within the
precincts of the Reichstag or a Landtag except by consent of the
President concerned.


ARTICLE 39.

Officials or members of the armed forces require no leave in order to
exercise their functions as members of the Reichstag, or of a Landtag.

Should they be candidates for a seat in these bodies such leave as
their candidature requires must be granted to them.


ARTICLE 40.

The members of the Reichstag are entitled to free passes on all German
railways, and also to allowances as provided by act of the Realm.


SECTION III

THE PRESIDENT OF THE REALM AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REALM


ARTICLE 41.

The President of the Realm shall be elected by the whole German
people.

Every German who has completed his thirty-fifth year is eligible, and
an act of the Realm shall make further provision.


ARTICLE 42.

The President of the Realm shall take the following oath on assuming
office----

    I swear that I will devote my powers to the good of the German
    people, that I will promote and protect the people's
    interests, will maintain the constitution and the laws, will
    fulfil my duties conscientiously, and will exercise justice
    towards all.

The addition of a religious oath is permissible.


ARTICLE 43.

The President holds office for seven years and is re-eligible.

The President of the Realm may be deposed from office before the
expiry of his term by popular plebiscite on initiative of the
Reichstag. The resolution of the Reichstag must have a two-thirds
majority. It precludes the President from any further exercise of
office. Should the plebiscite reject deposition, such vote counts as a
new election and entails the dissolution of the Reichstag.

The President of the Realm may not be criminally prosecuted without
consent of the Reichstag.


ARTICLE 44.

The President of the Realm cannot be concurrently a member of the
Reichstag.


ARTICLE 45.

The President of the Realm represents the Realm in international
intercourse. He contracts alliances and other treaties with foreign
Powers in the name of the Realm. He accredits and receives
ambassadors.

Declaration of war and conclusion of peace shall be by act of the
Realm.

Alliances and treaties with foreign States concerning subjects of
national legislation require the consent of the Reichstag.


ARTICLE 46.

The President of the Realm appoints and dismisses officials and
officers of the Realm, except as may be otherwise provided. He can
exercise his rights of appointment and dismissal through other
authorities.


ARTICLE 47.

The supreme command over the whole armed forces of the Realm resides
in the President of the Realm.


ARTICLE 48.[23]

Should any Land fail to fulfil the obligations imposed on it by the
constitution or laws of the Realm, the President of the Realm may
constrain it thereto by armed force.

Should public order and safety be seriously disturbed or threatened in
the German Realm, the President of the Realm may take the necessary
measures to restore public order and safety; in case of need he may
use armed force. For this purpose he may, for the time being, suspend
wholly or partly the fundamental civil rights detailed in Articles
114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153.

The President of the Realm is bound without delay to communicate to
the Reichstag all measures taken by him in virtue of Clause 1 or
Clause 2 of this Article. The Reichstag may require such measures to
be abrogated.

A Land Government may take temporary measures of the nature indicated
in Clause 2, should delay be dangerous. The President of the Realm or
the Reichstag may require such measures to be abrogated.

An act of the Realm shall make further provision.


ARTICLE 49.

The President of the Realm exercises the right of pardon. Amnesties
affecting the whole Realm require an act of the Realm.


ARTICLE 50.

All orders and decrees of the President of the Realm, including those
regarding national defence, require for validity the counter-signature
of the Chancellor or of the competent Minister of the Realm.
Responsibility is assumed with this counter-signature.


ARTICLE 51.

Should the President of the Realm be prevented from acting, he shall
be represented in the first place by the Chancellor. Should it seem
probable that he will be so prevented for a lengthy period, an act of
the Realm shall provide for his representation.

The same applies in the case of a premature vacancy in the Presidency
for the period preceding a new election.


ARTICLE 52.

The Government of the Realm consists of the Chancellor and the
Ministers of the Realm.


ARTICLE 53.

The President of the Realm appoints and dismisses the Chancellor and,
on his recommendation, the Ministers of the Realm.


ARTICLE 54.

Chancellor and Ministers of the Realm require the confidence of the
Reichstag for the exercise of office. Any one of them must resign
should the Reichstag withdraw its confidence by express resolution.


ARTICLE 55.[24]

The Chancellor presides over the Government of the Realm and conducts
its business on the basis of Standing Orders, which shall be drawn up
by the Government of the Realm and approved by the President of the
Realm.


ARTICLE 56.

The Chancellor lays down general policy and is responsible therefor to
the Reichstag. Each Minister of the Realm carries on his Department
independently within such lines, and is individually responsible
therefor to the Reichstag.


ARTICLE 57.

The Ministers of the Realm shall submit for discussion and resolution
to the Cabinet all Bills; further, all matters which either the
constitution or the laws require to be so submitted; also, differences
of opinion on topics which touch more than one Ministerial Department.


ARTICLE 58.

The Government of the Realm decides by simple majority. Where the
voting is equal the Chair has a casting vote.


ARTICLE 59.

The Reichstag may impeach the President of the Realm, the Chancellor,
and the Ministers in the State Court of Judicature, on the ground of
conscious violation of the constitution or law of the Realm. The
resolution calling for impeachment must be signed by at least one
hundred members of the Reichstag, and requires, in order to be valid,
the same majority as in the case of a constitutional amendment. The
act instituting the Supreme Court of the Realm shall make further
provision.


SECTION IV

THE REICHSRAT


ARTICLE 60.[25]

A Reichsrat shall be formed in order to represent the German Lands in
the legislation and administration of the Realm.


ARTICLE 61.

Each Land shall have at least one vote in the Reichsrat. In the case
of the larger Lands there shall be one vote per million inhabitants.
Any excess over a million not less than the total number of the
inhabitants of the smallest State shall be reckoned as a full million.
No Land may have more than two-fifths of the total number of
votes.[26]

German-Austria shall, after it has joined the German Realm, have the
right to participate in the Reichsrat with such votes as correspond to
its population. Until that time the representatives of German-Austria
shall have an advisory voice.[27]

The number of votes shall be determined afresh by the Reichsrat after
each general census.


ARTICLE 62.

No Land may have more than one vote on Committees formed by the
Reichsrat.


ARTICLE 63.

The Lands shall be represented in the Reichsrat by members of their
Governments. But one-half of the Prussian votes shall be held by the
Prussian provincial administrations; and further provision therefor
will be made by Prussian legislation.[28]


ARTICLE 64.

The Government of the Realm is bound to summon the Reichsrat should
one-third of the members of the Reichsrat demand it.


ARTICLE 65.

A member of the Government of the Realm shall preside over the
meetings of the Reichsrat. The members of the Government of the Realm
may take part in the proceedings of the Reichsrat and of its
Committees; they are bound to do so if summoned. They are entitled to
be heard at their request at any time of the proceedings.


ARTICLE 66.

The Government of the Realm, and also each member of the Reichsrat may
propose resolutions there.

The Reichsrat shall regulate its procedure by Standing Orders.

The plenary sessions of the Reichsrat are public. Publicity may be
suspended by standing order in particular discussions.

The voting shall be decided by simple majority.


ARTICLE 67.

The Reichsrat shall be kept informed of the course of current business
by the Ministers. The competent Committees of the Reichsrat shall be
consulted by the Ministers in matters of importance.


SECTION V

LEGISLATION OF THE REALM


ARTICLE 68.

Bills shall be introduced by the Government, or from the body of the
House.

Acts of the Realm shall be passed by the Reichstag.


ARTICLE 69.

Bills proposed by the Government require the consent of the Reichsrat.
Should the Government and the Reichsrat fail to come to an agreement,
the Government may nevertheless introduce its Bill, but must append
the dissenting opinion of the Reichsrat. Should the Reichsrat pass a
Bill from which the Government dissents, the Government must introduce
such Bill in the Reichstag together with an exposition of its own
views.


ARTICLE 70.

The President of the Realm shall have laws, constitutionally passed,
properly engrossed, and shall proclaim them, within a month, in the
Gazette of the Realm.


ARTICLE 71.

Acts of the Realm, unless otherwise provided, come into force on the
fourteenth day after the date of publication of the Gazette in the
capital of the Realm.[29]


ARTICLE 72.

Proclamation of an act of the Realm shall be deferred for two months
on request of one-third of the Reichstag. Laws which the Reichstag
and the Reichsrat declare to be urgent may be proclaimed by the
President of the Realm notwithstanding this request.


ARTICLE 73.

An Act passed by the Reichstag must, before being proclaimed, be
submitted to a plebiscite, should the President of the Realm so decide
within a month.

An Act whereof the proclamation has been deferred on request of
one-third of the members of the Reichstag must be submitted to
plebiscite should one-twentieth of the voters demand it.

A plebiscite must further be taken if one-tenth of the voters demand
the introduction of a Bill; such a popular request must be based on a
Bill prepared in due form. The Government of the Realm must inform the
Reichstag of such request together with an explanation of its own
views. No plebiscite shall be held should the Reichstag accept the
Bill demanded without amendment.

The President of the Realm is alone entitled to institute a plebiscite
concerning the budget, taxation, or payment of officials.

An act of the Realm shall make further provisions as to such
plebiscite and initiative.


ARTICLE 74.

The Reichsrat can veto acts passed by the Reichstag.

Such veto must be communicated to the Reichstag by the Government
within two weeks after its passage, and within two further weeks the
reasons therefor must also be submitted.

In case of such veto the act affected shall be submitted to the
Reichstag for reconsideration. Should the Reichstag and Reichsrat fail
to reach agreement by this means, the President of the Realm may,
within three months, refer the issue to a plebiscite. Should the
President fail to exercise this right, the act shall lapse. Should the
Reichstag, by a two-thirds majority, decide against the veto of the
Reichsrat, the President must, within three months, either proclaim
the act as passed by the Reichstag, or order a plebiscite.


ARTICLE 75.

No vote of the Reichstag may be abrogated by plebiscite unless a
majority of the voters record their votes.


ARTICLE 76.

The constitution may be legislatively amended. Nevertheless
constitutional amendments by the Reichstag are only valid if
two-thirds of the members are present, and at least two-thirds of
those present are in favour. Further, constitutional amendments by the
Reichsrat require a majority of two-thirds of the recorded votes.
Should a plebiscite be held by popular initiation on a constitutional
amendment, a majority of the electorate must be in favour.

Should the Reichstag vote a constitutional amendment over the veto of
the Reichsrat the President shall not proclaim such act should the
Reichsrat, within two weeks, demand a plebiscite.[30]


ARTICLE 77.

The Government of the Realm shall, unless otherwise enacted, issue
general administrative regulations for the execution of acts of the
Realm. The assent of the Reichsrat is requisite where the execution of
a national law rests with the Government of a Land.


SECTION VI

ADMINISTRATION OF THE REALM


ARTICLE 78.

The conduct of foreign affairs pertains exclusively to the Realm.

The Lands may make treaties with foreign States on matters which fall
within their own legislative competence; such treaties require the
consent of the Realm.

Agreements with foreign States concerning alteration of the national
frontiers shall be concluded by the Realm after the Land affected has
given its consent. Frontier alterations can be effected by act of the
Realm only, except in mere rectifications of frontiers in uninhabited
districts.

The Realm shall take the necessary measures and make the necessary
arrangements, in agreement with the Lands affected, to safeguard such
interests of those Lands as may be involved in their peculiar economic
connections with or in their geographical contiguity to foreign
States.


ARTICLE 79.

National defence is an affair of the Realm. An act of the Realm shall
uniformly regulate the military constitution of the German people,
with due regard for local conditions.


ARTICLE 80.

Colonial affairs pertain exclusively to the Realm.


ARTICLE 81.

All German merchant vessels constitute a united mercantile marine.


ARTICLE 82.

Germany constitutes a Customs and Commercial Union enclosed in a
common customs frontier.

The customs frontier coincides with the foreign frontier. Towards the
sea the continental coast line with the islands belonging to the Realm
forms the customs frontier. Deviations may be admitted where the
customs frontier reaches the sea or other waters.

The territory of foreign States, wholly or partly, may be included
within the Customs Union by treaty or other agreement.

Parts of the Union may be excluded under special necessity. In the
case of free harbours such exclusion can be terminated only by
constitutional amendment.

Territories excluded from the Union may be joined to a foreign Union
by treaty or by agreement.

All products of nature, industry and art in free circulation within
the Realm may be exported, imported, or transited across the frontiers
of the Lands or local communities. Exceptions to this may be made by
act of the Realm.


ARTICLE 83.

The authorities of the Realm shall administer all tariffs and all
indirect taxes.[31]

Where the authorities of the Realm administer national taxation,
provision shall be made preserving to the Lands their peculiar
interests in the sphere of agriculture, commerce, manufacture, and
industry.


ARTICLE 84.

The Realm shall, by legislation, regulate:--

(1) Financial administration within the Lands in so far as required in
the interests of the uniform execution of the national fiscal laws;

(2) The organisation and functions of the authorities entrusted with
the execution of the national fiscal laws;

(3) Accountancy between the Realm and the Lands;

(4) Re-imbursement of the costs of fiscal administration.


ARTICLE 85.

All income and expenditure of the Realm must be estimated yearly and
incorporated in the Budget.

The Budget shall be passed as an act before the opening of the
financial year.

Expenditure shall normally be voted for a year; in special cases it
may also be voted for a longer period. In general, no clause in the
Budget is admissible which extends beyond the financial year, or which
does not refer to income or expenditure of the Realm or to financial
administration.

The Reichstag may not increase items of expenditure proposed in the
Budget or insert new items of expenditure without the consent of the
Reichsrat.

Failing consent of the Reichsrat the provisions of Article 74 apply.


ARTICLE 86.

The Minister of Finance shall, with a view to discharging the
responsibility of the Government, submit to the Reichstag and to the
Reichsrat an account of all appropriations made out of the national
revenues in the year following that in which the appropriations have
been made. An act of the Realm shall provide further for the auditing
of such accounts.


ARTICLE 87.

Money may be raised by loan only for extraordinary expenditure and, as
a rule, only on account of expenditure for remunerative purposes.

Money may only be raised by loan or other liability assumed on behalf
of the Realm with the sanction of an act of the Realm.


ARTICLE 88.

Posts, telegraphs, and telephones are exclusively the affair of the
Realm. Stamps are uniform throughout the Realm.

The Government shall, with the consent of the Reichsrat, establish
regulations and rates for the use of communications. With the consent
of the Reichsrat it may delegate this power to the Minister of Posts.

The Government shall, with the consent of the Reichsrat, set up an
Advisory Committee for Posts, Telegraphs, Telephones, and their rates.

The Realm alone has power to contract with foreign States concerning
communications.[32]


ARTICLE 89.

The Realm shall acquire as its property all railways serving public
communication and administer them according to a uniform system.

The rights of the Lands to buy private railways shall be transferred
to the Realm on its demand.[33]


ARTICLE 90.

The Realm, in acquiring the railways, shall acquire all rights of
expropriation and all sovereign prerogatives in connection with the
railway system. In case of dispute the Supreme Court of Judicature
shall decide the extent of such rights.


ARTICLE 91.

The Government shall, with the consent of the Reichsrat, issue all
regulations concerning construction, management, and traffic of the
railways. With the consent of the Reichsrat it may delegate these
powers to the competent Minister.


ARTICLE 92.

The national railways shall be administered as an independent economic
concern though their Budget and their accounts shall be incorporated
in the national Budget and accounts; they shall be responsible for
their own expenditure, including interests on, and sinking-fund for,
their own debt, and they shall accumulate their own reserve-fund. A
special law shall regulate the extent of the sinking-fund and of the
reserve-fund, as well as the purposes to which the reserve-fund may
be put.


ARTICLE 93.

The Government shall, with the consent of the Reichsrat, set up
Advisory Committees for Railway Communication and Rates for the
national railways.


ARTICLE 94.

When the Realm has taken over the railways serving public
communication within a particular district, new railways serving
public communication may not be built within such district except by
the Realm or with the consent of the Realm. Should the building of new
lines, or the alteration of existing lines, touch on the province of
the police authorities of a Land, the railway administrative
authorities must consult the local authorities before deciding.

Where the Realm has not yet taken over the administration of the
railways, it may, by act of the Realm, build at its own cost, or
commission others to build, with the right of expropriation, such
railways as may be essential to public communication or national
defence notwithstanding that those Lands, through whose territories
such railways run, object; nevertheless, the sovereign prerogatives of
the Lands shall not hereby be affected.

Every railway must permit another railway to effect a junction with it
at the cost of the latter.


ARTICLE 95.

Railways serving purposes of public communication which are not
administered by the Realm are subject to the supervision of the
Realm.

Railways subject to the supervision of the Realm shall be constructed
and equipped on the same principles as those laid down by the Realm.
They must be maintained in good working order and must be extended to
meet traffic requirements. Passenger and goods traffic must be served
according to their requirements.

In regulating rates, the aim must be to maintain uniform and low
rates.


ARTICLE 96.

All railways, including those not serving purposes of public
communication, must accede to requirements of the Realm made in the
interests of national defence.


ARTICLE 97.

The Realm shall acquire as its property and administer the waterways
serving purposes of public communication.

When the Realm has taken over the waterways, new waterways serving the
purposes of public communication shall not be constructed or extended
except by the Realm or with its consent.

In administering, extending, or constructing waterways, the Realm
shall co-operate with the Lands to safeguard the requirements and
development of agriculture and of irrigation.

Every waterways administration must permit another inland waterways
system to effect a junction with it at the cost of the latter. The
same shall apply to the connections between waterways and railways.

In taking over the waterways the Realm acquires the right to
expropriate, to fix rates, and to administer the river police system.

The undertakings of the River Development Companies in regard to the
natural waterways of the Rhine, Weser, and Elbe shall be taken over by
the Realm.


ARTICLE 98.

The Government shall, with the consent of the Reichsrat set up
Advisory Committees to co-operate in the administration of waterways.


ARTICLE 99.

No dues may be levied over natural waterways except such as are
applied to construction, plant, or other works facilitating
communication. They must not exceed, in the case of State or municipal
construction, the costs incurred by building and upkeep. Costs
incurred by the building and upkeep of works which do not exclusively
facilitate communication but are also designed for other purposes, may
only be defrayed out of dues levied on shipping pro rata. Interest and
sinking-fund for the capital involved are reckoned as part of the cost
of construction.

This shall apply to dues levied on artificial waterways and on
constructions in connection with them or in harbours.

In the administration of inland canals shipping dues may be levied on
a basis of the total combined costs of a canal, a river, or of a whole
waterways system.

This shall also apply to floating of constructions on the navigable
waterways.

The Realm is alone entitled to levy heavier dues on foreign ships and
their freights than are levied on German ships and their freights.

The Realm is entitled, by legislation, to obtain contributions from
users of the waterways by other methods, in order to serve the upkeep
and extension of the German waterways system.


ARTICLE 100.

An act of the Realm may levy part of the cost of upkeep and
construction of inland waterways on any person benefiting, otherwise
than by navigation, from the construction of dams in cases where more
than one Federal State has participated in the costs of construction
or where such costs have been borne by the Realm.


ARTICLE 101.

The Realm shall acquire and administer all marine signals, in
particular beacons, light-ships, buoys, and land beacons. When the
Realm has taken these over, new marine signals shall not be
constructed or extended except by the Realm or with its consent.


SECTION VII

JUSTICE


ARTICLE 102.

Judges are independent and subject to the law only.


ARTICLE 103.

The normal judicature shall be exercised by the Court of the Realm and
the Courts of the Lands.


ARTICLE 104.

Judges of the normal judicature shall be appointed for life. They may
not be deposed from their office, either permanently or temporarily,
nor may they be transferred to another bench, nor may they be
pensioned off against their will, except in consequence of a judicial
decision, and then only for the reasons, and in the form, laid down by
law. Legislation may fix a retiring age, on reaching which judges must
accept a pension.

This clause shall not affect suspension from office carried out in
virtue of a legal enactment.

In the case of a redistribution of courts, or of circuits, the
judicial administrations of the Lands may compel judges to accept
transference to another bench, or pensions, but only with payment of
full salary. This does not apply to commercial judges, assessors, or
jurors.


ARTICLE 105.

Extraordinary courts are forbidden. Every person has the right to
demand that he be produced before the competent Court. Legal
enactments concerning military courts and courts-martial are not
hereby affected. Military courts of honour are abolished.


ARTICLE 106.

The military judicature shall be abolished except in time of war and
on board men of war. An act of the Realm shall make further provision.


ARTICLE 107.

Administrative courts both in the Realm and Lands shall be set up by
legislation for the protection of the individual against decrees and
ordinances of the administrative authorities.


ARTICLE 108.

An act of the Realm shall set up a Supreme Court for the German Realm.




GERMAN CONSTITUTION

SECOND CHAPTER

FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS[34]


SECTION I

THE INDIVIDUAL


ARTICLE 109.[35]

All Germans are equal before the law.

Men and women have, as citizens, fundamentally the same civil rights
and duties.

Public privileges or disadvantages arising out of birth or rank shall
be abolished. Titles of nobility count only as part of a name; they
may no longer be conferred.

Only such titles may be conferred as indicate an office or a
profession; academic rank is not hereby affected.

The State may confer no orders or insignia.

No German may accept titles or orders from a foreign State.[36]


ARTICLE 110.

Nationality of the Realm and of the Lands shall be acquired and lost
as may be regulated by act of the Realm. Every national of a Land is
at the same time a national of the Realm.

Every German has, in every Land, the same rights and duties as the
nationals of that Land.


ARTICLE 111.

All Germans have the right of free movement throughout the Realm.
Every German has the right of staying and of settling in any part of
the Realm he please; he has the right of acquiring property there and
of earning his livelihood. This may only be restricted by act of the
Realm.


ARTICLE 112.

Every German may emigrate to a foreign country. Emigration may only be
restricted by act of the Realm.

All nationals have the right to the protection of the Realm both
within and without the Realm, as against a foreign country.

No German may be handed over to a foreign Government for prosecution
or punishment.[37]


ARTICLE 113.

The foreign speaking parts of the Realm shall not be obstructed,
either legislatively or administratively, in the free development of
their ethnological characteristics, especially in the use of their
mother tongue in educational establishments, in internal
administration and in the administration of justice.


ARTICLE 114.

Liberty of the person is inviolable. Restrictions on, or deprivation
of, personal liberty may not be imposed by the public authorities
except in virtue of a law.

Persons who have been deprived of their liberty must be informed on
the following day at latest by what authority and on what grounds this
has been ordered; they must have immediate opportunity of lodging
objections against such deprivation of liberty.


ARTICLE 115.

Every German is master in his own dwelling, which is inviolable.
Exceptions are only admissible when the law so provides.


ARTICLE 116.

Acts are punishable only if they have been designated by law as
punishable before they were committed.


ARTICLE 117.

The secrecy of the post, telegraph, and telephone service is
inviolable. Exceptions are only admissible under act of the Realm.


ARTICLE 118.

Every German may express his opinion in speech, writing, print,
pictorially, or by any other means, within the limits imposed by the
law. He may not be obstructed in this right by any contract relating
to his work or his employment; no disadvantage may be imposed on him
by any person, should he make use of his right.

There is no censorship; nevertheless, restrictions may be laid down by
law with regard to cinemas. Moreover, legislative action is admissible
for the suppression of obscene or indecent literature, as well as for
the protection of young persons at public performances or
exhibitions.


SECTION II

THE COMMUNITY


ARTICLE 119.

Marriage, as being the basis of family life and of the maintenance and
growth of the nation, shall be under the special protection of the
constitution. It rests on the equality of the two sexes.

The State and the local authorities shall undertake to perfect, purify
and promote family life. Numerous families shall be protected
proportionately.

Motherhood can claim protection and provision by the State.


ARTICLE 120.

The education of their offspring in physical, spiritual, and social
efficiency is the supreme duty and natural right of the parents; the
social State supervises such activities.


ARTICLE 121.

Legislation shall provide for illegitimate children the same
opportunities for physical, spiritual, and social development as are
provided for legitimate children.


ARTICLE 122.

Young persons shall be protected against exploitation and against
moral, spiritual, and physical neglect. The necessary arrangements
shall be instituted by the State and municipalities.

Protective provisions of a compulsory character can only be imposed by
law.


ARTICLE 123.

All Germans are entitled to meet together, peaceably and unarmed,
without previous notice or special permission.

An act of the Realm may require notification of open-air meetings,
and, where there is direct danger to public security, may forbid them.


ARTICLE 124.

All Germans are entitled to form associations or unions for purposes
which are not in contravention of the penal law. This right may not be
restricted by preventive measures. The same holds good for religious
unions and associations.[38]

Every association may acquire corporate rights in accordance with the
provisions of the Civil Code. Corporate rights may not be refused to
any association on the ground that its aims are of a political,
social, political, or religious nature.


ARTICLE 125.

The liberty and secrecy of the ballot are guaranteed. An electoral law
shall make further provision.


ARTICLE 126.

Every German may address a written petition or complaint to the
competent authority or the people's representatives. This right may be
exercised both by the individual or by several persons in common.


ARTICLE 127.

Local authorities and associations of local authorities have the right
to administer their own affairs within the limits laid down by the
law.


ARTICLE 128.

All citizens without exception are eligible for public office as
provided by the law, and in proportion to their suitability and
services.

All exceptional measures against women officials are abolished.

An act of the Realm shall regulate the Civil Service.


ARTICLE 129.

Officials shall be appointed for life, except as may be otherwise
provided by law. Pensions and the pensions of dependants shall be
regulated by law. Rights duly acquired by officials are inviolable.
Officials may have legal remedy for recovering financial claims.

Officials shall not be dismissed, nor provisionally or permanently
pensioned, nor transferred to another office with less salary, except
under provisions and procedure established by law.

Every official penalty must be subject to appeal and revision.
Unfavourable entries may not be made in the personal record of any
official unless he has had opportunity to reply to them. Officials
have the right to examine their record.

The inviolability of duly acquired rights and the right to have
recourse to legal process for the recovery of financial claims are
especially guaranteed to professional soldiers. In all other respects
their position shall be regulated by an award of the Realm.


ARTICLE 130.

Officials are servants of the community, not of a party.

Freedom of political opinion and freedom of meeting shall be secured
to all officials.

Legislation of the Realm shall provide officials with special civil
service representation.


ARTICLE 131.

Should an official, in exercising his public authority, be guilty of a
breach of his official duty towards a third party, responsibility
therefor shall fundamentally attach to the State of the Body employing
such official. They may reserve the right of retributory action
against the official. Recourse to an ordinary court of law must not be
excluded.

The competent legislature shall provide for that.


ARTICLE 132.

Every German is bound to undertake honorary duties in accordance with
the law.


ARTICLE 133.

Every German is bound to give personal service on behalf of the State
or the local authority in accordance with the law.

Military service shall be as provided in the Law of National Defence
of the Realm. The same law shall determine how far any fundamental
citizen's rights shall be restricted for those on military service in
the interests of their duties and of discipline.


ARTICLE 134.

All citizens without exception shall contribute proportionately to
their means to all public burdens in accordance with the law.


SECTION III

RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS BODIES


ARTICLE 135.

All residents in the Realm enjoy entire freedom of faith and of
conscience. The undisturbed practice of religion is guaranteed by the
constitution and under the protection of the State. General
legislation shall not be affected thereby.


ARTICLE 136.

The free exercise of religious practices shall neither condition nor
limit the civil and constitutional rights and duties of citizens.

Enjoyment of civil and constitutional rights and entry into public
office are independent of religious faith.

No person is bound to publish his religious convictions. The public
authorities may not inquire into any person's membership of a
religious body except where rights and duties or a legally instituted
statistical census are involved.

No person may be forced to take part in any religious act or ceremony
or to be present at any religious service or to adopt any religious
form of oath.


ARTICLE 137.[39]

There is no State Church.

Freedom of association in religious bodies is guaranteed. No limits
shall be imposed on the formation of religious associations within the
Realm.

Every religious association shall order and administer its own affairs
independently, subject to general legislative limitations. Such
associations shall appoint to their offices without co-operation of
the State or the local authorities.

Religious associations acquire a juridic personality according to the
general regulations in the Civil Code.

Religious associations retain the status of public corporations if
they have previously enjoyed it. Other religious associations may
obtain it, on demand, should their constitution and their membership
guarantee their permanent character. Should several such public
corporate bodies join to form one federation, such federation is
itself a public corporate body.

Religious associations which are public corporate bodies may tax their
members on the basis of the rate assessments and subject to Land
legislation.

Associations whose aim is to promote the cult of a common view of life
shall be on a par with religious associations.

The Land Legislatures shall be responsible for any further regulation
of the application of these principles.


ARTICLE 138.

The Land Legislatures shall discharge any liabilities due to religious
bodies in virtue of a law, contract, or deed. The Realm shall lay down
general principles on this matter.

The property of religious bodies and religious associations shall be
guaranteed, as also their rights in respect of their institutions,
foundations, and other funds devoted to worship, education, and social
welfare.[40]


ARTICLE 139.

Sundays and feast days recognised by the State are maintained as
holidays and days of spiritual refreshment.


ARTICLE 140.

Men on military service must be granted sufficient free time to fulfil
their religious duties.


ARTICLE 141.

In so far as a need of religious services and of religious
ministration makes itself felt in the army, in hospitals, prisons, or
other public institutions, admission shall be accorded to religious
associations, but in this there shall be no compulsion.


SECTION IV

SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION


ARTICLE 142.

Art, knowledge, and their instruction are free. The State guarantees
to protect them and co-operates to promote them.


ARTICLE 143.

The education of youth is provided for in public institutions
established by the Realm, the Lands, and Local Authorities in
conjunction.

The training of teachers shall be uniformly regulated for the whole
Realm on the general lines laid down for higher education.

Teachers in public schools have the rights and duties of State
officials.


ARTICLE 144.

All education is under State supervision, in which the State may
associate the Local Authorities. Such supervision is exercised by
senior officials with special training.


ARTICLE 145.

Education is universally compulsory. It is effected in elementary
schools, with at least eight years' attendance, and in continuation
schools, up to the completed eighteenth year. Education and
educational apparatus in elementary and continuation schools are free
of charge.


ARTICLE 146.[41]

Public education shall be organically developed. The foundation
school, which shall be common to all, shall lead on to the secondary
and higher school system. This organisation shall keep in view the
variation of vocations; and admission to schools shall have in view
the capacities and inclinations of the child, and not the financial or
social position of its parents or their religious beliefs.

Nevertheless, on demand of the parents or guardians, elementary
schools for their particular religious faith or their particular views
shall be set up within a municipality, always provided that the
regular school programme in the sense of Clause 1 be not hereby
prejudiced. The wishes of parents and guardians shall be considered as
far as possible. The Land Legislatures shall provide further, subject
to the general principles of an act of the Realm.

Realm, Lands, and Local Authorities shall provide funds to enable
poorer members of the community to attend the secondary and higher
schools; in particular, they shall provide maintenance grants for the
parents of children who are deemed suitable to receive further
education in the secondary and higher schools for the period of such
education.


ARTICLE 147.

Private schools, in place of public schools, require the consent of
the State and must conform to Land law. The consent of the State must
be given if such private schools are not inferior to the public
schools in respect of their educational aims and arrangements, and in
respect of the professional standard of their teaching staffs, and if
no distinctions are made between scholar and scholar on account of the
financial position of their parents. Consent shall be refused if the
financial and legal position of the teaching staff be not sufficiently
secured.

Private elementary schools may only be set up if a minority of parents
or guardians, claiming consideration under Clause 2 of Article 146,
have no public elementary school for their faith or views, or if the
educational administrative authorities recognise that special
educational interests are involved.

Private preparatory schools are abolished.

The legal status of private schools which do not take the place of
public schools is unchanged.


ARTICLE 148.

All schools shall aim at inculcating moral character, a civic
conscience, personal and professional efficiency in the spirit of the
German national character and of international conciliation.

The teacher in public schools shall avoid offence to those of contrary
opinion.

Education in citizenship and technical instruction are part of the
curricula. Every scholar shall, on leaving school, receive a copy of
the constitution.

Realm, Lands, and Local Authorities shall promote popular and
university education.


ARTICLE 149.

Religious instruction is an ordinary part of the curriculum except in
the non-religious (secular) schools. It shall be regulated by the
legislation on education. Religious instruction shall be given in
harmony with the principles of the religious association concerned,
without prejudice to the control of the State.

The giving of religious instruction and the instituting of Church
ceremonies shall be dependent on consent of the teacher; the
acceptance of religious instruction and participation in Church
ceremonies and acts shall be dependent on consent of those persons
responsible for a child's religious education.

The theological faculties in the Universities shall be maintained.


ARTICLE 150.

Monuments of artistic, historic, natural, or picturesque interest
shall be under the protection and care of the State.

The Realm is responsible for preventing the export of German artistic
treasures to foreign countries.


SECTION V--THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM.[42]


ARTICLE 151.

The social economic system must conform to the principles of equity
with the special object of guaranteeing an honourable livelihood to
all. Within these limits economic freedom shall be secured to each
individual.

Legal compulsion is only admissible to maintain rights which have been
threatened or to secure an overwhelming public interest.

Freedom of trade and of manufacture shall be guaranteed by acts of the
Realm.


ARTICLE 152.

In commerce freedom of contract shall prevail subject to the law.

Usury is forbidden. Contracts contrary to public morality are null and
void.


ARTICLE 153.

Property is guaranteed by the constitution. Its rights and
responsibilities and restrictions are to be laid down by law.

Expropriation can only be undertaken in the common interest and in
virtue of a law. Adequate compensation shall be paid, unless otherwise
provided by act of the Realm. Any dispute as to the amount of
compensation shall be referred to the ordinary courts. Property of the
Lands, the local authorities, or public associations can only be
expropriated by the Realm against compensation. Property imposes
obligations. Its use by the owner must at the same time serve the
common good.


ARTICLE 154.

The right of inheritance shall be guaranteed in accordance with the
Civil Code. The laws shall determine the proportion of inherited
property accruing to the State.


ARTICLE 155.

Distribution and cultivation of the soil shall be supervised by the
State so as to ensure against abuses and to endeavour to secure
healthy housing for every German, and suitable homes for each German
family, especially those with many children, in which they can live
and work. In drawing up a housing code special consideration shall be
paid to the claims of those who have fought in the war.

Landed estate may be expropriated if it is required for housing, or
for a settlement or reclamation policy, or in the interests of
agriculture. Entails shall be abolished.

The owner of the soil is bound to cultivate and make use of his land,
in the common interest. Increment value due to no expenditure of work
or of capital shall be utilised for the common good.

All riches of the soil and all natural resources of economic use shall
be under the supervision of the State. Private royalties shall, by
law, be transferred to the State.


ARTICLE 156.

An act of the Realm may without prejudice to the payment of
compensation, and subject to the regulations concerning
expropriation, transfer to public ownership private businesses
suitable for socialisation. It may name itself, the Lands, or Local
Authority as partners in the administration of such business
undertakings or associations, or in any other way assure itself a
predominant influence therein.

The Realm may further legislate, in case of urgent necessity and in
the interest of the national economy, to oblige business undertakings
or associations to combine, on the basis of self administration, with
a view to securing the co-operation of all the productive forces of
the nation, to associating employers and employed in the
administration, and to regulating production, manufacture,
distribution, employment, prices, as also import and export of goods
on principles of public economy.

Distributive productive co-operative societies and their federations
may, on their own demand, and with due regard to their constitution
and character, be incorporated in the public economic system.


ARTICLE 157.

The labour forces of the nation are under the special protection of
the Realm. The Realm shall draw up a uniform labour code.


ARTICLE 158.

Intellectual work, the rights of discoverers, inventors, and artists,
shall be under the care and protection of the Realm.

International agreements shall secure validity and protection in
foreign countries for German intellectual, artistic, and technical
creations.


ARTICLE 159.

Freedom of association with the object of guaranteeing and improving
conditions of work and of employment shall be secured to all
individuals and all professions. All compacts or measures which seek
to limit or obstruct this freedom are illegal.


ARTICLE 160.

Any person occupying the position of employee or worker is entitled to
have such free time as is necessary to avail himself of his rights as
citizen, and, in so far as serious injury is not thereby done to his
employment, such free time as is necessary to discharge honorary
public offices conferred on him. His claims to compensation shall be
determined by legislation.


ARTICLE 161.

The Realm, with the controlling co-operation of insured persons, shall
create a comprehensive system of insurance for the maintenance of
health and efficiency, for the protection of motherhood, and for
provision against old age, infirmity, and change of circumstances.


ARTICLE 162.

The Realm shall support the principle of international regulation of
the legal rights of workers, with the object of securing a uniform
minimum of social rights to the working classes of mankind.


ARTICLE 163.

Every German is morally bound, without prejudice to his personal
liberty, to make such use of his intellectual and physical capacities
as shall be required by the common good.

Every German shall be given the possibility of earning his living by
economic labour. In so far as suitable employment cannot be found for
him, provision shall be made for his necessary maintenance. Acts of
the Realm shall make further provision.


ARTICLE 164.

Legislative and administrative measures shall be taken to encourage
the independent middle class in agriculture, industry, and commerce
and protect it against exploitation and extortion.


ARTICLE 165.

Workers and employees are called on to co-operate with the employers
on a basis of equality, in regulating wage and work conditions and in
furthering the general economic development of the forces of
production. The organisations of either side and their agreements
shall be recognised.

Workers and employees shall, for the prosecution of their social and
economic interests, receive legal representation in Works Councils,
and also in District Workers' Councils organised by economic spheres,
and in a Central Workers' Council.

District Workers' Councils and the Central Workers' Council shall be
combined with the employers' representatives and local representatives
in District Economic Councils and in a Central Economic Council, for the
execution of their economic functions and for joint enforcement of the
Socialisation Laws. District Economic Councils and the Central Economic
Council shall be so constituted as to include representatives of all
important professional groups in proportion to their economic and social
importance.

Bills on social and economic questions of fundamental importance must
be submitted by the Government of the Realm to the Central Economic
Council for consideration before being introduced. The Central
Economic Council is entitled itself to initiate such bills, and if the
Government of the Realm objects, it must, nevertheless, submit such
draft to the Reichstag with an explanation of its views. The Central
Economic Council may appoint one of its members to support the bill in
the Reichstag.

Functions of control and of administration may be transferred to
Workers' and Economic Councils within the spheres assigned to each.

The organisation and objects of the Workers' and Economic Councils,
and their relations to other social autonomous bodies, are exclusively
in the jurisdiction of the Realm.[43]


TEMPORARY CLAUSES AND FINAL CLAUSES.


ARTICLE 166.

Until the Supreme Administrative Court has been constituted, the
Supreme Court shall appoint to the Court of electoral revision.


ARTICLE 167.

The provisions of Clauses 3 to 6 of Article 18 shall only come into
force two years after proclamation of the constitution.


ARTICLE 168.

Until the act of the Realm referred to in Article 63 is promulgated,
but at most for one year, the Prussian votes in the Reichsrat may be
exercised by members of the Government.


ARTICLE 169.

The Government of the Realm shall determine at what date the
regulation laid down in Clause 1 of Article 83 shall come into force.

Collection and administration of customs and excise may, on their
demand, be left to the Lands for a reasonable transition period.


ARTICLE 170.

The postal and telegraph departments of Bavaria and Würtemberg shall
be transferred to the Realm at latest on April 1st, 1921.

In so far as agreement concerning the terms of the transfer has not
been reached by October 1st, 1920, the Supreme Court of Judicature
shall decide.

Existing rights and responsibilities of Bavaria and Würtemberg shall
remain in force until the transfer. Nevertheless, postal and
telegraphic communication with foreign countries shall be exclusively
regulated by the Realm.


ARTICLE 171.

State railways, waterways, and marine lights shall be transferred to
the Realm at latest on April 1st, 1921.

In so far as agreement concerning the terms of transfer has not been
reached by October 1st, 1920, the Supreme Court of Judicature shall
decide.


ARTICLE 172.

Until the law constituting a Supreme Court of Judicature comes into
force its functions shall be carried out by a Senate of seven members,
of whom four shall be chosen from among their own members by the
Reichstag and three by the Supreme Court. It shall regulate its own
procedure.


ARTICLE 173.

Until promulgation of the act of the Realm referred to in Article 138,
existing grants of the State to the religious associations in virtue
of laws, contracts, or deeds shall continue.


ARTICLE 174.

Until the act of the Realm above referred to in Clause 2 of Article
146 is promulgated, previous legislation shall remain in force. The
act shall pay special regard to those districts where a school which
makes no religious distinction is established by law.


ARTICLE 175.

The provisions of Article 109 do not affect orders and insignia
bestowed for service during the years 1914-1919.


ARTICLE 176.

All public officials and those on military service must take the oath
to this constitution. The President of the Realm shall make further
provision.


ARTICLE 177.

Where the existing law prescribes the formula of oath in a religious
form, an individual may also be legally sworn so as to omit the
religious form by saying the words: I swear. In all other respects the
legal oath remains unaffected.


ARTICLE 178.

The constitution of the German Realm, dated April 16th, 1871, and the
act for the Provisional Government, dated February 10th, 1919, are
repealed.

The remaining laws and ordinances of the Realm remain in force, in so
far as consonant with this constitution. The conditions of the Peace
Treaty signed at Versailles on June 28th, 1919, are not affected by
this constitution.

Orders legally issued by the public authorities in virtue of
previously existing laws remain valid until replaced by further orders
or legislation.


ARTICLE 179.

In so far as reference is made in laws or ordinances to regulations or
institutions abolished by this constitution, there shall be
substituted therefor the corresponding regulations or institutions of
this constitution. In particular the Reichstag shall be substituted
for the National Assembly, the Reichsrat for the States' Committee,
and for the President of the Realm, elected under the act for the
Provisional Government, a President of the Realm elected in virtue of
this Constitution.

The function of issuing ordinances pertaining to the States' Committee
in virtue of previous regulations shall pass to the Government of the
Realm; in issuing ordinances the Government of the Realm shall require
the consent of the Reichsrat as laid down in this constitution.


ARTICLE 180.

Until the first Reichstag, the National Assembly shall count as
Reichstag.[44] Until the first President of the Realm shall enter upon
office, his functions shall be carried out by the President elected
under the act for the Provisional Government.


ARTICLE 181.

The German nation has pronounced upon and passed this constitution
through its National Assembly. It comes into force on the day of its
proclamation.

                                        (Signed) PRESIDENT EBERT.
                       Ministers ERZBERGER, MULLER, DAVID NOSKE,
                       SCHMIDT, SCHLICKE, GIESBERTS, MAYER, BELL.

_Schwarzburg, 11th August, 1919._


NOTES.

[1] ART. 1.--The whole character of this Constitution is contained in
this provision that the "Reich" is a republic. It was introduced in
order to convey that new Germany, while retaining the ancient title and
tradition of "Reich," had given it a new significance, and that thereby
no concession was intended either to Monarchists or Imperialists or
Militarists.

Therefore "Reich" is not to be translated Empire. Commonwealth would
perhaps be the best rendering, but Realm will be used here as more
convenient.

[2] This clause is of crucial importance. Henceforward all sovereignty
is of the German people and not of the princes or principalities. The
German Bund of 1815 was a mere confederation between sovereigns or
Staaten Bund. The North German Bund of 1866 was a federation of
semi-sovereigns, or Bundes Staat. The present German Republic is still a
Federal State, but sovereignty is inherent in the people, not in the
constituent governments.

[3] ART. 2.--The transformation of this Constitution from a centralised
republic into a confederation and back to a federation has been reviewed
already. The word "lander" is literally translated for this and other
reasons.

[4] ART. 3.--"Whether these colours black-red-gold, are really the
colours of the ancient Reich, which historians dispute, or are those of
the Lutzow Free Company, we look rather to the political ideals and aims
associated with them during the nineteenth century. It was the idea of
political freedom and of national unity that kept the black-red-gold, an
honoured symbol in German Austria long after the black-white-red had
flown over the German Empire. As the historian Constantine Franz has
said, in mediæval times there was an Austro-Germany, in modern times a
Prusso-Germany, and now there must be a German Germany."--Dr. Preuss,
introductory speech, 24th February, 1919.

The clause as it stands is a compromise between the "Right," who wished
to retain the black, white, and red, and the "Left," who wanted the red
flag. A compromise in which the Right have as elsewhere had the best of
it--as the red flag is not allowed.

[5] ART. 4.--"German Democracy can only welcome a League of Nations that
has itself a really democratic constitution and that recognises without
reserve or restriction the liberty and equality of all its members. We
shall have no members of inferior status in our commonwealth, but
neither will we be of inferior status in the League of Nations."--Dr.
Preuss, speech introducing the Draft Constitution, February, 1919. The
phases of this clause have been reviewed above, see p. 236.

[6] ART. 6.--See Art. 78 as to the rights in foreign relations retained
by the Lands.

[7] See Art. 80.

[8] This simple attribution of military matters to the Reich replaces
the complicated recognitions of the "reserved rights" of the southern
States in the early drafts. See p. 257 for the importance of this
clause.

[9] The first draft gave the Reich exclusive jurisdiction over railways,
canals, and air traffic, which it now shares with the Lands.--See Art.
7, § 19.

[10] ART. 7.--This, with § 12, represents a gain to Socialism, as the
transfer of "Socialisation" to the Reich prevents indefinite obstruction
by a Conservative Landtag. See Art. 153.

[11] See Art. 171.

[12] ART. 8.--See Art. 85 for rights retained by a Landtag; also p. 254
for the general effect of this provision.

[13] ART. 10.--The earlier drafts formulated such principles as an
integral part of the Constitution.

[14] ART. 17.--What a "free State" Constitution means was not defined by
the authors of the Constitution. Its opponents argued that it might
admit of a monarchist restoration in Prussia, but this has since been
barred constitutionally by the provision that the Reich is a Republic
(Art. 1).

[15] The first draft established a single chamber legislation in the
Lands.

[16] This sentence was added apparently to bar the setting up of further
unparliamentary Räte republics in opposition to the Chambers, as in
Bavaria, Brunswick, etc.

[17] This residential qualification was added to meet objections that
otherwise Landtag elections might be influenced by an influx of outside
voters.

[18] ART. 18.--This, the most contentious article in the Constitution,
embodies the concessions made by the centralising purists--its
authors--to the federalising particularists--its critics. The history of
its phases has been given above, see p. 243. Its form in the first draft
follows:--

"It is open to the German people to establish new Free States within the
Realm, irrespective of the previous frontiers, in so far as the racial
character of the population, economic conditions, and historical
traditions favour their formation. Such new Free States should have at
least two million inhabitants.

"The union of two or more constituent States into a new Free State is
effected by governmental convention between them, subject to the
approval of the Legislatures and the Government of the Realm.

"If the population of a district wish to secede from their allegiance
and join one or more German Free States, or form a Free State, a
plebiscite is necessary. The plebiscite will be initiated by the
Government of the Land or of one or more autonomous bodies comprising at
least a quarter of the population concerned. It will be instituted by
the Government of the Realm and enforced by the local authority."

The general effect of the Constitution combined with present political
conditions is that there will be no change of any importance in the
composition of the countries constituting the Realm. See also Art. 167
suspending operation of pars. 3 to 6 of this article for two years.

[19] ART. 20.--In the first draft the Sovereign Reichstag consisted,
not, as here, of the popular Chamber only, but of the Volkshaus--the
popular Chamber, and the Staatenhaus--the representatives of the States.
The latter, now known as the Reichsrat (see Art. 60), is no longer part
of the sovereign body and has merely a suspensory veto against it (see
Art. 74).

[20] ART. 25.--The President's power of dissolution was unrestricted in
the early drafts.

[21] ART. 34.--This article, a late addition, constitutionalises a
procedure that strengthens democracy as against bureaucracy.

[22] ART. 35.--The institution of a permanent Committee on Foreign
Affairs for which our advocates of democratic diplomacy have laboured in
vain for twenty years has been commented on above, see p. 253.

[23] ART. 48.--It was in virtue of the article corresponding to this in
the provisional constitution that Berlin attacked and suppressed the
Council Governments set up in Munich, Brunswick, Bremen, and elsewhere.

[24] Art. 55.--The Chancellor is consequently no longer the sole
responsible Minister, but merely as elsewhere in democratic
constitutions _primus inter pares_, the Premier. Moreover, he has, of
course, lost his special authority from the Crown and his special
association with Prussia. It would have been better in the circumstances
to have dropped the title of Chancellor.

[25] Art. 60.--The Reichsrat is the much reduced remains of the
Bundesrat. (See p. 252 and Arts. 1 and 20.)

[26] Art. 61.--For the importance of this restriction in respect of
Prussia, see p. 251.

[27] This clause as to German Austria was objected to by the Supreme
Council at Paris as contrary to Art. 80 of the Treaty of Versailles:
"Germany acknowledges and will respect strictly the independence of
Austria.... She agrees that this independence shall be inalienable
except with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations." The
exchange of notes on the subject is not worth appending, as it expresses
an ephemeral phase of diplomacy and not any essential principle of
international law. In so far as the German Constitution is concerned,
the objection seems unimportant in view of Art. 178, par. 2.

[28] Art. 63.--A compromise between the former Bundesrat, where the
delegates were plenipotentiaries representing semi-sovereign States, and
the centralising draft of Preuss, where they were no more than
politicians chosen on party, not on particularist, grounds.

[29] Art. 71.--A curious little example of provincial jealousy, which
substituted "capital" for "Berlin."

[30] Art. 76.--"It is an essential of democratic constitutions that they
be difficult of amendment" (Preuss). On the other hand, such
difficulties have their danger, as in 1851, when Louis Napoleon obtained
a simple majority but not a two-thirds majority for an amendment; which
led eventually to a _coup d'etat_ and a complete overthrow of the
Constitution.

[31] See Art. 169.

[32] See Art. 170.

[33] See Art. 171.

[34] These principles were formerly mostly provided for in the German
Code; though some, and they the most important, were previously only
guaranteed by State Law.

[35] See Art. 175.

[36] Art. 109.--Equality of the sexes and abolition of titles, is of
course, an innovation.

[37] Art. 112.--This has no effect as against demands for extradition
made under the Treaty of Versailles, in view of Art. 178, § 3.

[38] Art. 124.--This repeals a provision of the Prussian Constitution
that religious associations can only be incorporated by special
legislation.

[39] Art. 137.--This article is a much-contested compromise in which the
Socialists have secured in the end a striking success over the Roman
Catholic Centrum and Right. The latter entered the fight with the full
intention of maintaining State Churches everywhere. Probably the
set-back suffered in the South from the Communist capture of Munich
reconciled them to disestablishment without disendowment. That par. 7
would give "Bolshevism" a claim to equal treatment with Protestantism is
not of immediate importance.

[40] See Art. 173.

[41] Art. 146.--The separation of church and school effected in this and
preceding articles was bitterly opposed by the Roman Catholics. Defeated
in this article, they secured a respite in Art. 174 which postpones its
application until further legislation. See Art. 174.

[42] This chapter breaks new ground, as might be inferred from the
abstract character of its provisions and constant reference to special
legislation.

[43] Art. 165.--An Act regulating these councils has already been
introduced (Aug., 1919). For the importance of this article, see above,
pp. 69, 172, 184.

[44] On the strength of this clause the Government have transformed the
National or Constituent Assembly into a Reichstag, without the election
certainly contemplated when it was first convoked.




INDEX




INDEX


A

Adlon-Hotel, demonstrations, 208

Advertisements, as documents, 56, 79, 131

Aeroplanes, German, 91

Alsace-Lorraine, cession, 46, 150, 202, 215, 220, 223

Anhalt, 250

Army, v. Frei-Corps, Prussia, Constitution

"Atrocities," v. Lichtenberg, Munich, Halle

Augsburg, fighting, 143

Austria, German, union, 108, 217 _et seq._ 323

---- and Council movement, 174

---- and Treaty, 213, 221

Author, personal experiences v. Berlin, Halle, Munich, Brunswick,
  Augsburg, Bamberg, etc.


B

Bamberg, temporary Bavarian Capital, 109, 113

---- visit to, 145 (v. Hoffmann, Munich)

Bauer, minister, 33;
  premier, 211

Berlin, visit to, 2;
  appearance, 41, 48, 62, 73;
  strike, 68;
  fighting, 51, 63, 64, 71 _et seq._

Berlin and Brunswick, 97 _et seq._

---- and Munich, 107 _et seq._

Bernstein, speech, 45

Bethmann-Hollweg, reference, 237

Bismarck, references, 237, 246

Blockade, effect, 121 _et seq._;
  breaches, 134, 151

Bohemia, German, 222, 223

---- coal, 145

Bolshevism, Berlin, 60, 78, 82;
  Brunswick, 93;
  Munich, 109, 113;
  failure, 22, 114;
  peace, 213, 224, 227, v. Sovietism

Bombardment, Berlin, 72, 79

Bread, quality, 128

Breitscheidt, politician, 169, 208

Bremen, fighting, 81;
  and Hamburg, 250

Brentano, reference, 169

Brockdorff-Rantzau, personality, 29, 32

Brunswick, fighting, 92 _et seq._;
  and Anhalt, 250

Bryce, Lord, reference, 2

Bujakowski, demagogue, 7

Butter, price of, 132


C

Catholic, v. Centrum, Clericals, Southern States

Cavell, Miss, 203, 214

Central Council, origin, 15;
  abdication, 23, 169, (v. Council movement)

Centrum, party, elections, 22;
  policy, 34, 69, 96, 166, 173, 206 (v. Clericals)

Chancellor, powers, 253, 323

Children, starvation, 122

Circus Busche, scene in, 44

Clemenceau, reference, 230

Clericals, and French, 24;
  education, 257

Coal, production, 154, 215;
  nationalisation, 158

Coalition Government, 33 (v. Centrum, Scheidemann)

Coburg, 250

Commissioners, Peoples, 13, 160, 262

Communal Councils, 166

Communist party, 51, 53, 55, 68, 173

---- ---- at Munich, 107 _et seq._, 219

---- ---- at Brunswick, 99, 104

Congress of Councils, 17, 160, 173 _et seq._

Constituent Assembly, v. National Assembly

Constitution, new, 32, 243 _et seq._, 267;
  for text, v. Appendix.

Cotton production, 135

Council movement, nature, 66, 166, 186, 191;
  failure, 13, 14, 181;
  necessity, 153, 225;
  history, 164, 166, 174;
  and Constitution, 172, 184, 243, 247, 325;
  and Entente, 186;
  and League of Nations, 239


D

_Daily News_, articles, 1, 2

Danzig, cession, 212, 213

Daümig, labour leader, 51, 169

Debt, German, 149, 151, 152

Dolbrück, Conservative leader, 246

Democrats, party, elections, 22;
  policy, 34, 163;
  in Councils, 51, 54;
  at Halle, 84;
  and Treaty, 205

Diplomacy, failure, 3, 228, 241

Duke William of Brunswick, 96


E

East Prussia, severance, 212

Ebert, President, policy, 18;
  personality, 31

Eden Hotel, influence, 78, 258;
  interview, 99

Education, constitutional provisions, 256, 324

Eichhorn, revolutionary, 19

Eight-hour day, 65, 165

Eisner, Bavarian premier, 111, 246

Election, National Assembly, 21, 196, 244

Erfurt, proclamation, 243

Erzberger, Centrum leader, policy, 47, 210;
  personality, 44, 147, 148

Executive Council, Berlin, 51, 68, 170, 183


F

Finance, German, 137, 147, 220;
  in constitution, 254

Flag, German, 321

Food, scarcity, 71, 100, 122 _et seq._, 133;
  importation, 28, 82, 131;
  production, 130, 138;
  organisation, 131

Foreign Affairs, Committee and Control, 254

---- ---- of Federal States, 321

Frankfort Assembly, 36

Frei-Corps, 22, 54, 67, 70, 92, 98, 257;
  recruiting, 56, 59;
  fighting, 73 _et seq._, 83;
  character, 74, 76, 78, 80, 167, 209;
  expenses, 148, 155;
  peace treaty, 210, 225


G

Germans, political incapacity, 66, 133, 181, 200, 208, 209

Germany, collapse, 120, 138, 147;
  ignorance of, 67, 198

Gerstenberg, General, 82

Gotha, 250

Guild Socialism, 93, 191, 238


H

Haase, policy, 18, 169

Halle, fighting, 82;
  personal experiences, 40, 84;
  "atrocities," 90;
  council conference, 185

Hamburg, 250

Hartmann, Austrian envoy, 47,;
  interview, 222

Hoffmann, Bavarian premier, 113, 118;
  interview, 118


I

Independents, 12, 16, 17, 31;
  club, 54;
  foreign policy, 18, 203;
  policy, 169, 173, 177;
  failure, 21, 69, 169;
  Berlin, 68;
  Halle, 8, 88, 185;
  Brunswick, 94, 97;
  Munich, 111;
  and Treaty, 203, 207, 209, 216

Industry, German, 128 _et seq._;
  and Treaty, 214

International Council, 239

Internationalism, 43, 207;
  and Treaty, 226, 234

Ireland and League, 233


J

Joffe, Bolshevist agent, 90

Junkers, 10, 253;
  example, 57;
  in industry, 160;
  in land, 216


K

Kaiser, 9, 214

Kaiserism, 5, 9, 13, 48, 58, 253;
  in elections, 22

Kaiserschloss, sack, 5

Kautsky, politician, 18

Koenen, Halle Independent, 29, 88

Kohn, Independent leader, 169


L

Labour, 65, 165;
  international 239

Land socialisation, 161

Landsberg, Coalition minister, personality, 32, 97, 206;
  Polish policy, 17;
  Brunswick, 97;
  Berlin, 19, 181;
  peace, 210

League of Nations, 35, 227, 230, 233, 261, 321

Ledebour, Independent leader, 169, 176

Legien, Majoritarian, 165, 169

Leipzig, 119

Levien, Communist, character, 110, 114;
  policy, 111;
  fate, 118, 144

Leviné, do., do.

Liberalism, German, failure, 36, 38, 63, 66, 248;
  peace, 214

Lichtenberg, fighting, 53, 75 _et seq._;
  "atrocities," 52, 77

Liebknecht, revolutionary, 7, 18;
  policy, 38;
  death, 20

Lloyd George, 230

Locomotives, surrender, 138

Ludendorff, General, 48

Luxemburg, Rosa, policy, 38;
  death, 20


M

Maerker, General, Weimar, 64, 83;
  Halle, 85 _et seq._;
  Brunswick, 101 _et seq._

Magdeburg, 97, 102

Majority Socialists, origin, 16, 17;
  policy, 22, 51, 65, 168, 175;
  foreign policy, 18;
  peace, 203, 207 (v. Halle, Brunswick, Munich, etc.)

Marine Division, 39, 81, 165;
  Berlin, 19, 70;
  Halle, 86;
  Brunswick, 93, 105

Marriage, Constitutional provisions, 255

Max von Baden, Government, 12, 16

Merges, revolutionary, 29, 95, 106

Monarchists, 9, 48, 231, 322

Müller, Richard, revolutionary, 51, 169, 184

Munich, fighting, 64, 107 _et seq._, 176;
  "atrocities," 115;
  journey to, 144


N

National Assembly, 30, 245, 260, 267 (v. Weimar)

Nationalism, 42, 208;
  peace, 211, 217, 223, 237

Naumann, democratic leader, 34

Noske, 19, 74, 78, 181, 258;
  personality, 33;
  interview, 84


P

Pabst, Captain, 80, 99

Paris Conference, 43 (v. Treaty of Versailles)

Passes, game of, 73, 101

Paulskirche Assembly, 246

Pauncefote, Lord, reference, 2

Poles, dispute, 17, 23, 24, 56, 212, 223

Population, decrease, 125, 150, 226

President, powers, 253 (v. Ebert)

Press misrepresentations, 4, 5, 67, 208

Preuss, Minister,; personality, 32;
  views, 40;
  Constitution, 243, 245, 249, 250, 258, 263

Proportional representation, 21

Prussia, sentiment, 24, 108, 219, 250;
  partition, 249, 250, 251;
  hegemony, 248, 251, 255, 257

Prussianism, fall, 10, 253, 259;
  guarantees, 218, 223;
  revival, 160, 252

Pyrmont, 250



R

Railways, German, 84, 138, 147;
  "underground", 102;
  collapse, 139;
  central, 255

Red Guard, Berlin, 78, 167;
  Munich, 117, 140

Reich, 23, 320

Reichsrat, 247

Reichstag, 247, 252, 323

Reparation Commission, 152, 215

Republic, 260, 320

Reuss, Prince, 106

Revolution, German, meaning, 3, 5, 10;
  history, 12 _et seq._, 20, 38, 63, 80, 83, 166, 204, 247, 250;
  failure, 15, 66, 168, 185, 243;
  peace, 211;
  Constitution, 244, 258 (v. Independents, Communists)

Revolutionary Corps, character, 67, 70 (v. Marine Division)

Rhodes scholars, 55

Richthofen, nationalist, speech, 48

Russian revolution, 19, 82, 161, 243;
  and British, 199, 216


S

Saar, cession, 150, 215, 223

Saxony, revolution, 64, 82, 93, 97

Scheidemann, premier, personality, 27, 29, 31, 181;
  government, 12, 16, 24, 33, 64;
  policy, 19, 34, 35, 64, 108, 174

Schücking, Professor, 47

Secret treaties, 232

Silesia, cession, 215

"Sneak trade," 132

Social Democrats, v. Majoritarians

Socialisation, Commission, 23, 159;
  interview, 155;
  policy 65, 101, 188, 153;
  acts, 156, 162;
  Constitution, 256, 321 (v. Land)

Soldiers' Councils, 15, 39, 88, 165, 167, 190

Southern States, 24, 32, 96, 108, 219, 243, 245, 247, 251, 258, 322;
  finance, 254;
  foreign affairs, 321;
  army, 257

Spartacists, ideals, 18, 58;
  fighting, 12, 19, 72 _et seq._

Stampfer, editor _Vorwärts_, _q.v._

Strikes, origin, 67;
  effect, 170;
  statistics, 154

Students, 59


T

Taxes, 149

Trade, 135, 151, 215

Treaty of Versailles, 43, 150, 201 _et seq._, 209;
  economic effect, 134, 137, 151, 214, 215, 226;
  extraditions, 213, 324;
  signature, 205, 207;
  Conservatives, 211;
  Liberals, 214;
  Labour, 216

Turkey, reference, 29

Tyrol, cession, 223


U

Unemployment benefit, 159;
  Council, 190


V

Vienna, 221

_Vorwärts_, 19, 64, 206, 240


W

Waldeck, 250

Washington Conference, 240 (v. Wilson)

Weimar, Assembly, 23, 267;
  failure, 36, 40, 63, 65, 82, 83, 164, 182, 195;
  peace, 207, 210;
  Court, 26;
  theatre, 28, 84

West Prussia, cession, 212

"Whitley Councils," 65, 165, 172, 187, 193

Wilson, "points," 47, 55, 232;
  failure, 229, 230, 237

Wissal, Minister, 33

Wittelsbach Palais, 109

Wolff, Theodore, 205

Würtemberg, fighting, 107 _et seq._, 143




  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
  RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
  BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E. 1,
  AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

       *       *       *       *       *

  +------------------------------------------------------------------+
  | Typographical errors corrected in text:                          |
  |                                                                  |
  | Page   2: centring replaced with centering                       |
  | Page  46: Parteibrulle! replaced with Parteibulle                |
  | Page  68: Clara Zietken replaced with Clara Zetkin               |
  | Page  93: "Chroniken. der Deutschën Städte."                     |
  |           replaced with                                          |
  |           "Chroniken der Deutschen Städte."                      |
  | Page  98: Holmstadt replaced with Helmstadt (a city in Germany)  |
  | Page 108: Goverment replaced with Government                     |
  | Page 109: Wurtemberg replaced with Würtemberg                    |
  | Page 112: Nikisch replaced with Niekisch                         |
  | Page 132: illiicit replaced with illicit                         |
  | Page 169: Daümig replaced with Däumig                            |
  | Page 182: rconstituted replaced with reconstituted               |
  | Page 286: Reicbstag replaced with Reichstag                      |
  | Page 289: Commerical replaced with Commercial                    |
  | Page 330: Dolbrück replaced with Delbrück                        |
  | Page 332: Maercker replaced with Maerker                         |
  | Page 333: Wissal replaced with Wissel                            |
  |                                                                  |
  | Unusual words:                                                   |
  |                                                                  |
  | Page  96: obiit is the Latin word for he/she died                |
  | Page 228: forrarder is a British word meaning further ahead      |
  |                                                                  |
  +------------------------------------------------------------------+

       *       *       *       *       *