The Chancellor, in the name of the "Government," brings in Bills to be passed by the Reichstag. If the Reichstag does not like a Bill, which sometimes happens, it refuses to give it a majority. But the "Government" does not fall. It can simply, as it has done on numerous occasions, dissolve the Reichstag, order a General Election, and keep on doing so indefinitely, until it gets exactly the kind of "Parliament" it wants. Thus, though the Reichstag votes on financial matters, it can be made to vote as the "Government" wishes.
As I have said, the Reichstag was invented to be, and has always served the purpose hitherto of, a forum in which discontented Germany could blow off steam, but achieve little in the way of remedy or reform. But during the war the Reichstag has even ceased to be a place where free speech is tolerated. It has been gagged as effectually as the German Press. I was an eyewitness of one of the most drastic muzzling episodes which has occurred in the Reichstag during the war—or probably in the history of any modern Parliament—the suppression of Dr. Karl Liebknecht, member for Potsdam, during the debate on military affairs on January 17, 1916. That event will be of historic importance in establishing how public opinion in Germany during the war has been ruthlessly trampled under foot.
The Reichstag has practically nothing to do with the conduct of the war.
Up, practically, to the beginning of 1916 the sporadic Social Democratic opposition to the war, mainly by Dr. Liebknecht, was ignored by the Government. The war-machine was running so smoothly, and, from the German standpoint, so victoriously, that the Government thought it could safely let Liebknecht rant to his heart's content.
Dr. Liebknecht had long been a thorn in the War Party's side. He inherited an animosity to Prussian militarism from his late father, Dr. Wilhelm Liebknecht, who with August Bebel founded the modern German Social Democratic Party. Four or five years before the war Liebknecht, a lawyer by profession, campaigned so fiercely against militarism that he was sentenced to eighteen months' fortress imprisonment for "sedition." He served his sentence, and soon afterwards his political friends nominated him for the Reichstag for the Royal Division of Potsdam, of all places in the world, knowing that such a candidature would be as ironical a blow as could be dealt to the war aristocrats. He was elected by a big majority in 1913, the votes of the large working-class population of the division, including Spandau (the Prussian Woolwich), being more than enough to offset the military vote which the Kaiser's henchmen mobilised against him. Some time afterwards Liebknecht was also elected to represent a Berlin Labour constituency in the Prussian Diet, the Legislature which deals with the affairs in the Kingdom of Prussia, as distinct from the Reichstag (the Imperial Diet), which concerns itself with Empire matters only.
Dr. Liebknecht is forty-four years old. Of medium build, he wears a shock of long, curly, upstanding hair, which rather accentuates his "agitator" type of countenance, and is a skilful and eloquent debater. A university graduate and well-read thinker and student, he turned out to be the one consistent Social Democratic politician in Germany on the question of the war. When the war began the Socialist Party was effectually and willingly tied to the Government's chariot—including, nominally, even Liebknecht. A few hours before making his notorious "Necessity-knows-no-law" speech in the Reichstag on August 4, 1914, Bethmann-Hollweg conferred with all the Parliamentary parties, and convinced them (including the Socialists) that Germany had been cruelly dragged into a war of defence. Later in the day, following other party leaders, Herr Haase, spokesman for the Socialists, got up in the House, voiced a few harmless platitudes about Socialist opposition to war on principle, and then pledged the party's 111 votes solidly to the War Credits for which the Government was asking. When the Chancellor afterwards made his celebrated speech it was cheered to the echo by the entire House, including the Socialists. I do not know whether Liebknecht was present, though he is almost certain to have been, but if so he made no note-worthy protest. How completely the Government befooled the Socialists about the war was proved a few days later when Dr. Franck, one of the Social Democracy's most shining lights and the man who was in line to be Bebel's successor, volunteered for military service. He was one of the first to fall fighting in September, somewhere in the West.
The authorities might have known that Liebknecht was a hard man to keep quiet if he ever decided to speak out. Fresh in the Government's mind was his bold exposure of the Krupp bribery scandals at the War Office (in 1913) and his disclosures about how the German munition trust for years systematically stirred up war fever abroad, in order to convince the German people of the necessity of speeding up their own huge armaments on land and sea. As soon as Liebknecht's Reichstag and Prussian Diet speeches began to show that he was tired of the muzzle, the Government called him up for military service. They stuck him into the uniform of an Armierungssoldat (Army Service Corps soldier). This meant that his public speeches in connection with the war had to be confined to the two Parliaments in which he held seats. Anything of an opposition character which he said or did outside would be "treason" or "sedition."
Liebknecht was put to work on A.S.C. jobs behind the fronts alternately in the East and West, I believe, but was given leaves of absence to attend to his Parliamentary duties from time to time. On these occasions he would appear in the Reichstag in the dull field-grey of an ordinary private—the only member so clad in a House of 397 Deputies, among whom are dozens of officers in uniform up to the rank of generals.
I was particularly fortunate to be able to secure a card of admission to the Strangers' Gallery of the Reichstag on January 17, the day set for discussion of military matters. I went to my place early—a few minutes past the noon hour, as the Reichstag usually convenes at 1 p.m. The floor was still quite empty, though the galleries were filled with people anxious, like myself, to see the show from start to finish.
The Reichstag's decorative scheme is panelled oak and gilt-paint. The members' seating space spreads fanlike round the floor, with individual seats and desks exactly like those used by schoolboys, which is not an inappropriate simile. On the extreme right are the places of the Conservative-Junker—landowners—Party; to their left sit, in succession, the Roman Catholic Clericals (who occupy the exact centre of the floor and are thus known as the Zentrum, or Centre Party). The "Centre" includes many priests, mostly Rhinelanders and Bavarians. Then come the National Liberals, the violently anti-British and anti-American Party, the Progressive People's Party, and the Social Democrats. The latter are on the "extreme left." That is why they are often so described in reports of Reichstag proceedings abroad. The Socialists comprise 111 out of 397 members of the House, so their segment of the fan is the largest of all. Next in size is the Centre Party, with eighty-five or ninety seats, the Conservatives, National Liberals, and Progressives accounting for the rest of the floor in more or less equal proportions.