Professor Mommsen, whose opinion has great weight in Germany, has
issued a remarkable manifesto. He says that "the overthrow of the Imperial Constitution is rapidly progressing." The Reichstag and the Emperor alike are being subjected to the absolutism of an alliance between the Tory landlords and the priests. That is revolution, and worse than personal government, because the autocrat would be impartial. All parties, in fact, are becoming revolutionary. The Liberals would like to convert the supreme head of the. State into a " first official," after the English pattern, and " that is revolu- tion." So is the desire of the Centre to reconvert Germany to Catholicism. So is the desire of the German squirearchy to restore aristocratic rule, and degrade the Emperor to be only first among his peers. And finally, so is the determination of the Social Democrats that every workman, without regard to his work, should receive out of a general pot the same quantity of soup as his neighbours. The only remedy is for Liberals and Social Democrats to unite in resistance; but that requires a modification in the ideas of each, which the Social Democrats in particular, who appear bent on "political suicide," will be slow to concede. We are not so hopeless as the Professor; but certainly the trend of events in Germany is towards Caesarism in the bands of a Caesar whose considerable powers of mind are rendered partially useless by perpetual hurry.
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