THE GERMAN ELECTIONS. T HERE appears to have been comparatively little
excitement displayed in Germany over the elections to the Reichstag. This is not to be wondered at, because, in the first place, the Reichstag is an assembly with little real power ; and in the second place, the general result was anticipated. It is, doubtless, true that the Reichstag has gained a little in plwer since the foundation of the Empire, but at the same time the German Imperial Executive is so strongly entrenched, and. the mass of the German people are still so given to the habit of obedience to dignified and regularly constituted authority, that it can scarcely be said. that the Government has sustained. any ap- preciable loss in its real position. Where the Reichstag does exercise genuine power is in relation to money measures ; it can refuse the fresh supplies which the Government declares necessary. Hence that section of the Reichstag which is able to give the casting vote does exercise some real power, and as that section is still, as of old, the Catholic or Centre party, which in itself is and must, in the nature of things, be a power in Germany, it is important to discover that the elections have rendered the Kaiser even more dependent on this section than before. It was by grace of the Centre party that the Kaiser's naval pro- posals were ultimately accepted ; and it will be by grace of the same party that any large or unusual Imperial expenditure will be carried through. We suppose it must be admitted that the final decision to support the Kaiser's policy of Imperial and naval expansion did not militate against the Centre party in the Rhenish and Bavarian districts, where the strength of that party lies. This is probably due to the enormous development of indus- trialism which has transformed Cologne and. Diisseldorf, which has made of Munich a great manufacturing as well as artistic centre, and which has lined the Rhine as far up as Bonn with mills and workshops. The necessary outlets for all this new German industry could not be ignored by the Centre party.
Indeed, the elections as a whole show the growing power of German manufactures and the decline of German agriculture. Germany has become already, in far less time than it took England, a great urban community, That appears to us the most prominent fact in German life, and it was therefore bound to make itself manifest in German politics.. In spite of Imperial patronage, the rural parties have lost Both the Conservative sections have indeed lost rather heavily ; the Conservatives proper standing in the new Reichstag at sixty-two instead of at seventy-two, as in the Reichstag of 1893, and the Free Conservatives at twenty instead of twenty-seven. The losses of the National Liberals, who usually vote solidly -with the Conservatives, are smaller, but still they have lost. Though they represent "Particularism," yet the Poles are a peasant party, and they have lost, standing as they do at fourteen as compared with nineteen in 1893. The- Anti-Semites, who under clerical guidance draw their strength largely from country districts, have also lost. On the other hand, those parties which have gained Are the parties which hold the German cities,—the Centre, the Radicals, and the Social Democrats. The Centre, as we have said, represents the nascent Rhenish and Bavarian industrialism, the Radicals have made significant gains in Berlin, and the Social Democrats have gained in nearly all the towns except Berlin, where they have lost seats to the Radicals,—on what ground does not seem clear, unless it is that the more Anarchical section, which has all along been strong in Berlin Socialism, has rebelled agains'; the centralised dictatorship of the party. We imagine that the urban professional and trading classes, dependent for their position on the growth of industry, have mainly voted Radical, and that the working classes have, on the whole, voted Socialist, except in those cases where they have, as devout Catholics, supported the Centre party. It will be seen, therefore, that what we may call Toryism of an extreme and fanatical type, practically unknown in England), representing rural proprietorial interests, has lost ; and that the forces of democracy, whether Liberal of the " Manchester " type, Socialist, or Catholic, but all representing the growth of industrialism and urban life, have gained. In short, what strikes us as the most obvious moral of the elections is that the old forces and forms of German life are weakening, that the ancient Conservative entrenchments are being destroyed, and that we now have to deal with a modernised Germany.
It may perhaps be asked why we place the Centre party in the same category with the Radicals and Social Democrats, since the last-named party is avowedly anti-religious, and the Radicals are largely indifferent on the religious question. We reply that the Centre party is essentially a democratic party, and a party, moreover, committed to reforms only less far-reaching than those of the Social Democrats, for whose candidates the Catholic democratic electors have often voted on the second ballots. The Centre party embodies to a large extent the spirit of Bishop Ketteler of Mainz, the chief founder of German Catholic "Christian Socialism ; " its organs in the Press are democratic in tone ; and so far as the present Pope has advanced in the direction of wide Catholic social reform, he has had no stronger supporters than the members of the German Centre party, with the possible exception of the democratic American Catholic prelates, with whom the Centre party has much in common. This being the case, it is clear that democracy, in some or other of its varied forms, controls a majority of votes in the Reichs- tag; a small majority, it is true-201 out of 397 votes, counting the three sections we have named, the South German Democrats, and the Bavarian Peasant League— but a majority sufficiently large, with the aid of such small groups as the Alsatian Deputies, who are always " agin the Government," to veto any financial proposals which do not recommend themselves to democracy, and for the rest, to do whatever in the way of worrying and delay can be done. And. when it is remembered how faulty the present distribution of seats is—Berlin, e.g., with nearly two millions of people having only six members—it is quite evident that the comparatively small anti-Government majority inside the Reichstag represents a very much larger majority outside.
The Kaiser finds himself, therefore, with his principal support, the rural party, weakened, and with a probably clear majority of the voters of Germany against the spirit and ideas on which his present rule is based. He finds himself face to face with a growing urban power which, throughout the whole range of German history, has always been hostile to extreme Monarchical authority. He finds in the growth of the Social Democratic vote a strong hint of the discontent which prevails among the working classes. He finds, finally, that he has to reckon with the spiritual authority wielded by a democratic Catholicism, and that he must make a " deal " with that particular power if he is to get any legislation through the Reichstag. On the whole, then, one would be inclined to say that the elections can scarcely be very pleasing to the Emperor. Great as is his power, obedient as his huge Army undoubtedly is, he can hardly fail to see that it will be dangerous for him to stand, sword in hand, across the clearly defined path of the national destiny. Medireval as he is in many ways, the Kaiser has a quick imagi- nation, and—so strange and many-sided a being is man —an equally quick perception of the modern aspects of life, which must be reckoned with. He can scarcely fail to see that it no longer " pays " to join hands with a reactionary Prussian squirearchy, whose antiquated pretensions are as absurd as it would be to substitute oil lamps for electric lights in the streets of Berlin. If his medimval side attracted him for a moment to the Prussian squires, with whose despotic notions his own sympathies also coincided, his modern side will surely lead him to see that it is in commercial and industrial development the future of Germany lies. It is evidently a great source of danger for a nation to have as its head one with so nervous and responsive an organisation that he is ever changing his course as he feels sympathy with this, that, or the other cross-current of the stream of life. An " im- pressionist " Emperor might easily, in the complexity of modern life, either make or mar his nation's fortunes, but the chances are he would mar them. What is needed is the insight to perceive the main current of the nation's destiny, and the strength of will and purpose to co- operate with it. The Emperor cannot, of course, har- monise the conflicting tendencies of a majority which comprises Catholics, Socialists, and "Manchester" Liberals. He may, perhaps, attempt to play these forces against one another. But a better course, as it seems to us, would be for him frankly to recognise that Germany has passed for ever from feudalism to modern life, and that the old restraints which were more or less picturesque when Jena was being fought and lost, are exasperating and ridiculous now. Let the Kaiser accept the democratic spirit, let him admit the chose jugee, and supplant his government by spies and police and lese-majeste by a modernised system, relying on the less extreme men of the discontented parties to meet him half-way as soon as he shows that he has frankly renounced the impossible legacies of a feudal past. France, said Thiers, is always Left Centre at heart. That is true, not only of France, but of every civilised country, and it is for the ruler of a country to discover and appeal to that dominant temper of what Bagehot happily called "animated moderation." This, at least, seems to us the moral of the German elections.
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