1893.

There was from the first a widespread doubt among the people of the necessity for such heavy sacrifices as were entailed by this bill, and the possibility of carrying it successfully through Parliament. The body deferred dealing with it until the following year, when the fate of the bill was adversely decided on the 6th of May by a majority of forty-eight out of three hundred and seventy-two votes. Parliament was at once dissolved, and new elections were ordered to take place on the 15th of June. In the interval some unexpected splits favoring the Government's cause occurred in the Centre party and among the Liberals, or Radicals—a name now more befitting. As the election proceeded, it became more and more evident that the opposition was losing and the Government gaining ground.

1893. THE ARMY BILL.

The newly elected Parliament was opened on July 4th, and the Army bill, in a slightly modified form, was passed without delay after the third reading by a majority of sixteen out of three hundred and eighty-six votes. Small as this majority seems, it was a decided victory for the Government, since the latter had abstained throughout the elections from influencing them in any way. The ultimate passage of the bill, however, leaves the implied financial problem still unsolved. The outlook is not cheerful. Although an objective view of recent events is out of the question, there is room for doubting that the future of Germany will be tranquil. Owing to the general depression in industrial and agricultural fields, the financial question is sure to engender bitterness and strife. Nor is there any encouragement to be gained when we consider the numerous factions into which the parliamentary representation of the Empire is divided at the present time. What with the proportionately large gain of the Social-Democrats during the late elections, the numerically powerful Centrists acting in the interest of Roman Catholicism, the Particularists asserting themselves again, and the Anti-Semites with their socialistic affinities, it would seem inevitable that great struggles are yet to come. But we might hopefully say that Germany, in the evolution of her national growth, is just now passing through a trying period of change, the mists of which will be swept away in time, when by a clearer apprehension of parliamentary life and practice, and the exercise of a more concentrated patriotism, she will be strong, indeed, in freedom and in Unity.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

OF GERMAN HISTORY.

The history of Germany is generally divided into Five Periods, as follows:

  1. From the earliest accounts to the empire of Charlemagne.
  2. From Charlemagne to the downfall of the Hohenstaufens.
  3. From the Interregnum to the Reformation.
  4. From the Reformation to the Peace of Westphalia.
  5. From the Peace of Westphalia to the present time.

Some historians subdivide these periods, or change their limits; but there seems to be no other form of division so simple, natural, and easily borne in the memory. While retaining it, however, in the chronological table which follows, we shall separate the different dynasties which governed the German Empire, up to the time of the Interregnum, which is removed, by an irregular succession during two centuries, from the permanent rule of the Hapsburg family.

FIRST PERIOD. (B. C. 103—A. D. 768.)