The German Elections
1 N the great days of ancient Rome the cry that the -I- Republic was in danger would always rally the best physical and moral energies of the nation. A challenge has been thrown down to the German Republic, which is only ten years old; and the answer to that challenge is a matter of moment for the world. If there should be a rally of Roman. quality in Germany against those who want to bring down Parliamentary Government and to end those international engage- ments which imply a full recognition by Germany of her obligations as a neighbour and as an honourable country, the Republic will be saved. There is no reason whatever why it should not be. All that has happened so far is that the supporters of the Constitution have been plainly warned. It is for them to take the necessary precautions ; and they can do so if they place the good of the State above the interests of any party or group. The danger, though it can be clearly discerned, is still at a distance.
Nobody foresaw that either the National-Socialists (popularly called the Fascists or Nazis) or the Communists would make such enormous gains at the General Election. The Fascists now have one hundred and seven seats and the Communists seventy-six—a formidable bloc dedicated to a destructive purpose. What can have caused this landslide at the polls ? There is hardly ever a single cause for a widespread tendency, and in this ease there seem as usual to be several causes. Germany is suffering terribly from unemployment. The first effect of the Rationalization of industries, which as a policy has been deliberately thought out and strongly pressed, is the displacement of labour. In a modern community when one class suffers ail suffer ; there has been an economic set-back which makes everybody poorer.. Meanwhile the politicians have not shown the least sign of being able to tackle the difficulties. The various parties and groups (which are largely the result of the undoubted capacity of Proportional Representation for representing nice divisions of political sentiment) have spent their time in struggling for survival instead of in planning the common good.
The voters were bewildered and several millions of them had evidently reached the stage of washing their hands of the whole absurdity. Here there is a strong resemblance to what preceded the Fascist revolution in Italy. It is easy to say that Signor Mussolini robbed his country of liberty, but when that is said—not without arousing much sympathy in us—it has to be remembered that the old parties which were abolished had hardly proved their right to continue. The Liberals had made a very feeble exhibition of Liberalism. In Germany recently there has been only too evident the familiar feeling of those who say in a time of public distress, " Well, nothing could be worse than this. There will be no harm in trying a fresh experiment."
And this feeling has undesignedly been nurtured from without Germany as well as from within. When the Treaty of Versailles was signed the Germans were willing to put up with disarmament on the understanding that the rest of Europe would progressively disarm. Now they see that there has been no Continental disarmament. The impediments to it seem to increase rather than to disappear. At this point, no doubt, we are passing front such motives as prompt the casting of a temporary vote in order." just to wake up" the old parties in Germany to those motives which are deeper and much more likely to become permanent. There is,
in fine, a genuine Nationalism in Germany—not to be confused with the antics of those who cheer on a putsch
—which asks no more than that the theoretical equality of Germany recognized at Geneva should be made a reality. A strange but salutary comment is thus made on the French policy which insists that security must be the preliminary to disarmament. The German Nationalist will not accept the humiliation of making anybody secure so long as the condition is that Germany remains helpless.
Europe must cease treading its weary way round this vicious circle if there is to be the least prospect of that goodwill upon which security is founded. France is now alarmed. She Sees that her position, instead of being safer, has become rather more precarious. But who has made it so ? It is necessary that the answer should be found to that question.
Fortunately for Germany, then, not all her Nationalists are of the Fascist type. If the issue were fairly laid before those who are Nationalists, but -not National-Socialists, most of them would probably say that their best chance of pursuing a " strong " foreign policy was to do it through the existing Constitution. Again, it is reserved for the Fascists to demand the instant repudiation of the Versailles Treaty and the abandonment of the Young Plan. One greatly wonders what the fickle or wavering voters who helped the Fascists at the election know of the facts about the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan. It has been calculated, and we have not seen it denied, that since 1924 Germany has borrowed from other countries about £500,000,000. In the same period she has paid in Reparations about £100,000,000. Thus, having punctually discharged her "debts," she is still . enjoying a borrowed working capital of about £400,000,000. Is that a situation to be recklessly amended?
If the Central Parties, even with only an intermittent help from the independent groups, can hold together in support of Parliamentary government they can keep Germany's danger safely at arm's length. Those who are joined together against the Constitution, the Fascists and the Communists, will be, after all, in an extremely loose alliance. Alliances which are inspired by a negation, not by a "yea," do not last very long as is rule. The principals may hold together so long as they are destroying, but when they begin to erect something in the place of the ruins they find that they are no longer friends, but enemies. Recent history supplies a grotesque example of that in China where the Nationalists called in the Communists of Russia to organize propaganda and war. As we frequently remarked at the time, there could be no permanent understanding between the Chinese, who are the most intense individualists in the world, and the Bolshevists who make Communism their religion. There are few traces of that particular alliance left unless they are to be found in the conduct of the bandits, who claim all other people's property as their own and are the worst thorn in the flesh of the Nanking Government.
There is a certain shrewd sense in the argument of those who say that the safest thing to do with the German Fascists now is to give them some positive task —something that involves responsibility: Why not, it is asked, acknowledge theirright to be represented in the next Government and allot to them those dominating departments, the Ministries of Defence and the Interior, which. they are already claiming. No doubt the Chan- cellor, Dr.- Bruning, .feels that • this is not practical politics for all its psychological attractiveness. A more important question for him, therefore, is whether he could create such a "Great Coalition" as previously governed Germany for a couple of years. The Socialists and the Economic Party would be essential to this Coalition, and the difficulty is that no Socialist will readily co-operate with a Chancellor whose domestic reforms are typically those of a bourgeois. Probably we shall not see how matters are shaping for a fortnight or three weeks.
The obscurity of the German future makes one more conscious than ever of what Germany lost when Herr Stresemann died. The doctrine of the German Fascists is the affair of Germans themselves so far as it affects them in their homes, but the foreign policy of Fascism is another story altogether. At present one looks in vain for anyone with Herr Strcsemann's magnificent ability to persuade thinking people that the interests and pride of Germany are alike bound up in a policy of honesty and conciliation towards the rest of the world.
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