CORRESPONDENCE.
AUGUST BEBEL.
uro Tits EDITOR OP TIM "SPECTATOR."' Sin,—" We desired," said my German friend, "to call our boy Louis,' after his uncle, now dead. But we couldn't." " Couldn't P Why ? " "The Government wouldn't allow it." " What ? Can't you Germans call your children any name you please ?" "No. They objected to 'Louis' because that is the French form of the name. The officials had lists of
names which were permissible. See I ' the registrar remarked, these are all good old German names. What can a good German want more ? Plenty of choice. The child can't be registered otherwise. Then, of course, you'll come under the punishment clauses.' So we had to take the German form of the name. That's how it is he's 'Ludwig.'" "What's the reason for such an arbitrary regulation ? Have you any idea ?" "Well, I believe the fact is that some people wished to call their children after Bebel. And the Government wouldn't have it. I'm told that the boys' Christian name would have been simply Bebel,'—Bebel Schmidt, and so on; while the girls' would have been Bebelina' or ' Bebeline;—Bebelina Neumann, Bebeline Wegele, and so on." "A great compliment to Bebel, that the German Government should be so evidently afraid of the effects even of his name upon the rising generation." "Perhaps it was thought his name would inoculate that generation with his political principles,—which don't favour an everlasting possession of Germans and Germany by Hohenzollernism." "But you don't seem to fear that such an inoculation would upset the general apple-cart ? " "Bless you, no ! Leaving out of account our Junkers, our neck-or-nothing fighting men, and our bureaucrats, although not budging from our various political parties, we have ceased to look upon the Socialists as being so many wild beasts, or their veteran leader as being our adversary the Devil,' who, 'as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.' In fact, setting aside the ' ancient exaggerations of demand—which he himself seems to have dropped nowadays—Bebel in some sort represents the cause of us all. He is not crying for the moon,' as interested people—interested the other way round—would have us imagine. If the working classes are made secure in their rights as human beings and political units, what can that do but consolidate the reasonable rights of the classes above them ? " This was spoken in the heart of Germany, by a gentleman whose characteristics and circumstances make him a rational Conservative. Some years ago he was, politically speaking, a rabid Junker,—out-Limburgising Count Limburg. There are many such solid, well-to-do, straight-thinking Germans who have moved and believe with him.
Viewed in the light of his actual achievements—and what other criterion can there be ?—August Bebel is easily the greatest living German engaged in public affairs. Out of straggling groups of despised, poverty-stricken workmen and labourers, despite the bitter and often unscrupulous antagonism of all social superiors, in a country ruled by a steel-clad military caste, he has created a progressive party having a compact vote of three millions. Persecutions and difficulties incident to the performance of this tremendous task were endured and overcome with qualities of intrepidity, skill, and devotion of a type wholly superior to anything similar which could ever be discovered in any of his adver- saries. The feat had never been accomplished merely by unusual courage, unusual cleverness, unusual application. For a while Bebel was the only Social Democrat returned to Parliament, and, single-handed, amid mocking enemies, he faced Bismarck and all the power of triumphant militarism with magnificent dauntlessness and unflinching defiance. He would never yield. He has never yielded. Then was the time when prison was surer than home for him, and the gaoler than his family. Imprisonment is the tyrant's argument; a method of stupidity. It kills men—and women !— but refutes nothing. Bebel declined to admit himself as logically demolished thereby. The physical hurt was not permitted to subdue by a breath the unbending spirit. In prison or out, he persistently urged the claims of the inarticulate masses—his beloved "proletariat "—for full recognition and rights as members of the body politic ; for a due admission of their vast and growing interests in the con- sideration of national affairs and the shaping of national policy, internal or external, whensoever and by whomsoever promulgated ; for fair adjustment of their position as workers with full liberty to combine, no longer exploited by capitalism, but admittedly co-labourers therewith.
He withstood every one of the plentiful attempts to suppress him. Some of these were amazingly contemptible. For instance, Bebel was forced to abandon convenient premises where as a turner he had built up a paying business, and, at heavy loss, to re-establish himself beyond the range of such nefarious "sniping." The more thorough the antagonism the more thorough his resistance. His unceasing propagandism gradually spread over the country, and was followed up by the beginnings of an organisation which to-day is pretty nigh perfect. He spoke at all kinds of gatherings to all kinds of people, sympathisers or opponents, with an unquenchable zeal, a burning force, a disregard of conventionalities, a contempt for constituted authorities, which often convinced and sometimes repelled, yet always showed that "the man," body and soul, was there "behind the gun." He argued, he besought, be reproached, he bantered, he protested, he condemned, he taunted, he jeered, he satirised, he startled, he scandalised, he horrified,—any- thing for a bearing, or the cause had perished ! He lived "the strenuous life "—the ultra-strenuous life—when Theo- dore Roosevelt was still in pinafores. That has been his normal life ; nor worth more, with him, than a casual reference, as, for instance, when opening the Jena Con- ference, he said :—" The party has only gained ground here in recent years. But thirty-six years ago, at the invitation of several friends—the foremost being Dr. Sy and Professor Abbe—I gave an address here before a distinguished assembly composed solely of professors, doctors, and students. I took pains to bold them as well as possible, but don't think that I gained us any new adherents then." Quietly concluding:— " I declare the sixteenth Party Conference since the annulling of the Socialist Law to be opened." Not a word to recall his conspicuous share in that fierce fighting for the overturn of repressive measures whereby the German Government made the Socialist an outlaw much as Nero did the Christian ! Fogey-opponents will often unearth these old-time screeds vented in the heat of furious combat, and, presenting some unconnected scrap of what seems horrible blasphemy or incitement to bloody revolution, portentously observe :—"You wish to know, my dear Sir, what August Bebel actually is ? There are his own words. Read them, and see for yourself. They need no addition of mine."
Bebel is quite a medium-sized man; wiry and active, or it -had gone badly for him. Neither handsome nor ill-looking, the main characteristic of his features is that of a set deter- mination. They are heavily lined by forty years' continual aggressive beleaguering of embattled power with insufficient forces. Yet this but aids their telling reflection of whatever mental phase is to find open expression. Bebel's hair is now almost white, and the once flowing brown beard is replaced by a snowy spike which scarcely amounts to an imperial. He wore, when the writer, heard him recently, a suit of sober grey, its long-tailed coat almost reaching his ankles; the top of his ample shirt-front crossed by the ends of a wide black necktie brought down at each side from beneath a deep-falling collar. His voice is pitched from the middle to a higher register, and of a penetrating quality which carries without necessity for effort to the furthest corners of a large ball. Often a core of grating timbre adds itself and smites on the ear, and doubtless helps this acoustical property. He makes a free use of simple gestures, as is customary with Germans, but carefully observes a wise abstention from anything awkward or obscure. In Bebel's lips the German language becomes surprisingly clear and concise. It is no longer a cumbersome verbal instrument of torture. He despises its pedantic involutions and divagations. He moves to the issue in a straight line whenever possible, and, at all events, thrusts circumlocution out of doors. That is a result of having spoken so long to "the common people," who for their understanding demand plain speech. There is no place for trope or hyperbole. Facts are set forth before the mental vision as clearly as a file of soldiers, their positive and relative meaning sharply defined, and the consequent deductions distinctly and unfalteringly affirmed and applied. A mordant humour bites important points into the minds of hearers ; and a grim irony. The sentences flow in a steady stream, with every sentence in its right place, and every word the right word. There is no fumbling with either brain or tongue ; neither harking back nor stumbling un- readily in advance. The points arrayed travel culmi- natingly onward, and at the precise intended moment transfix the object which has been made their aim. Bebel's most malignant opponents never found an occasion of besmirching his simple, cleanly private life. Like the village blacksmith, "he owes not any man," having secured a comfortable independence sans permission of the Iron Chancellor. He does not draw a single pfennig from party funds, the sole money payment received for political services being an allowance of about ten marks a day, which is given all Members of the Reichstag while the House is sitting.
One of the ideals with which lie has imbued the party is that the workman shall be delivered from servitude, intellectual and physical. German Social Democrats are not Socialists in the English sense. They constitute a political party of reform,—a party, moreover, which places less and less stress on violence as a means of attaining. its ends. Bebel contends that the public affairs of a country are the affairs of its people generally, and not of a few who, because of prior happenings, are seised of power. Especially is it undesirable and dangerous that a great nation such as Germany should be subject to the whims of an uncon- trollable personage to whom, for any reason or no reason, she has yielded plenary authority. The application ex- tends to everything which concerns the body politic. But particularly is such a condition to be resisted and revised when what is schemed or being done may, directly or indirectly, cause war. War is categorically the business of the total inhabitants of a country, and of no one person or clique of persons. Compared with the sacrifices of treasure and of the lives of such inhabitants as a mass, professional militarists to whom is entrusted the conduct of operations furnish little in either kind,—say five per cent. Thus it is plain common-sense that the common people who find the means and most lives have an inherent right of con- sent or non-consent to war. Bebel maintains they have a right to know for what it is proposed to fight; to pass judgment on the matter; and, accordingly, either to refuse or
agree to fight. He objects to leave such momentous issues in any hands but the bands of the entire nation, not after the event, but inceptively. And, clearly, it may be the most patriotic course to decline consent to a declaration of war.
Bebel is the only real critic of the German Government. On this score alone, were Germans not babies politically, they would intermit their monumental remembrancing of Kaisers, and erect a few statues to this doughty tribune,—say as he appears when pressing an evasive Chancellor for particulars as to the relations between the Cabinets of Berlin and London. No truer patriot exists than August Bebel. Unlike most Germans, however, he recognises high aims and good deeds in other nations. That has always earned him, and still earns him, the reproach of fools. Forsooth, to their small minds he thus vilifies his own country, and they would put up to auction the willingness of German workmen to die in a just quarrel for the Fatherland as though it were a marketable commodity ; as though German workmen had not freely given their lives in the battles of '70.71! We British have no better German friend than Bebel. Time after time from his seat in the Reichstag he has fearlessly stated—as he did the other day—that "the increase in the Fleet is directed wholly and solely against Great Britain." The answer has been, and is, but specious generalities and a tu quo que, the latter invariably to the accompaniment of " loud cheers " and " laughter " from Junkerdom. He and the Socialists will do what men can do to promote and maintain peace between our nations. Bebel does not believe that provocative augmentations of armament will aid this desirable end, and confidently affirms that Germany is already "the strong man fully armed "—with a vengeance ! It is scarcely Bebel's or the Social Democrats' fault that German politicians have as yet devised no closely organised Opposition. That arises from the peculiar sentimentalism of a race with but little more than thirty years' Parliamentary experience behind it. Hence, numerous tiny, ineffective clusters calling themselves this or that Pariei pitch pathetically insignificant tents on the wide political arena. Their occupiers stand at the tent-doors waving picturesque banners and chanting innocuous battle-songs, and at the present time remain insusceptible to suggestions for reasonable combination against a common enemy. Because of this, to decry Bebel and his party as a force may be expedient in the German Government, but is foolish in any Briton. At the last General Election 9,500,000 votes was the total for Germany. Of these, 3,025,000 represented the Social Democratic quota. The total vote at the last General Election in Great Britain may be roughly estimated at about four millions. Ranking things in proportional correspondence, what would be the influence among us of a man who at the coming General Election controlled two million electors ready and desirous to vote for him and his candidates ?—I
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