Prince Bülow's "safe Parliamentary majority" means, of course, a majority sufficient to outvote the Social Democrats, with whom every German Government has to reckon as a permanent opposition.
So far we have left the Social Democrats out of the picture. It was necessary to do this, in discussing German policy and the relation between the German Government and Reichstag opinion; for the German Government itself habitually leaves them out of the picture. Hitherto in Germany, so far as opinion on political questions has mattered at all, it is upper-and middle-class opinion that has counted, as it counted in England up to fifty years ago. To the German Government and to the ordinary educated German the Social Democratic party, though it numbers in its voting ranks over 4 million German workmen and others, does not represent German opinion at all: it represents something un-German and anti-German—a public enemy. Between the Social Democrats and the rest of society a great gulf is fixed, across which no intercourse is possible: as the pioneers who attempted to introduce the Workers' Educational Association into Germany found, such intercourse is forbidden from either direction. The Social Democrats are the "Red Danger," "men who," in the Kaiser's words, are "the enemies of Empire and Fatherland," and "unworthy" (except, of course, in war-time) "to bear the name of Germans." We must go back a hundred years in English history to realise the depth of the animosity between the Social Democratic party and the rest of German society. "The word Radical," says an English historian, "conveyed a very different meaning in 1816 to what it does now…. The hands of the Radicals were supposed to be against every man, and every man's hand was against them. Scott, when he talks of rebels in arms, always styles them Radicals. 'Radicalism is a spirit,' wrote the Vicar of Harrow in 1820, 'of which the first elements are a rejection of Scripture, and a contempt of all the institutions of your country, and of which the results, unless averted by a merciful Providence, must be anarchy, atheism, and universal ruin.'"[1] The Vicar of Harrow in 1820 very fairly sums up the substance of innumerable German speeches, pamphlets, and election addresses in 1912 on the subject of the Social Democrats.
[Footnote 1: Spencer Walpole, History of England, vol. i. p. 348.]
How is this extraordinary position maintained? How is it possible that in a modern, largely industrial community, the representatives of working-class opinion should be regarded as public enemies?
The chief reason lies, of course, in the fact that the German Empire is not a democracy and is not governed by ministers responsible to Parliament. The immense numbers and rapid growth of the Social Democrats have therefore not really been a menace to the Government. In fact, it has even been held in some quarters that it has been to the interest of the German Government, which is based on the Prussian military caste, to manoeuvre the Social Democrats into an extreme position and then to hold them up as a terrible example of what democracy means. "This," they can tell the German people, "is the alternative to Prussian rule." A dangerous policy, it may be argued, for the Social Democrats may some day secure a majority in the Reichstag. The Prussian answer to this is that, without a redistribution of seats, this is barely conceivable; and that, were it to take place, the Reichstag would promptly be dissolved for new elections on a narrower franchise. Bismarck himself contemplated this course, and his successors would not shrink from it.
Another reason why it has been possible for the Government to ignore the Social Democrats has been the absence of a practical alternative programme on the part of the Social Democrats themselves. "If I had to make out a school report for the Social Democratic Movement," said Prince Bülow in the Reichstag on one occasion, "I should say, 'Criticism, agitation, discipline, and self-sacrifice, I. a; positive achievements, lucidity of programme, V. b.'" The taunt is not undeserved. The Socialist Movement in Germany has suffered, like so many German movements, through a rigid adherence to logical theories. Under the leadership of old revolutionary thinkers like Bebel it has failed to adapt itself to the facts of modern German life. The vague phrases of its republican programme, survivals from a past epoch of European thought, have attracted to it a large mass of inarticulate discontent which it has never been able to weld into a party of practical reformers. In the municipal sphere and in the field of Trade Unionism, under the education of responsibility, German Socialism can show great achievements; but in national policy it has been as helpless as the rest of the German nation.
What effect, it will be asked, is the war of 1914 likely to have on the German working-class movement? In 1848 middle-class Germany made its stand for democracy. May we hope for a similar and more successful movement, in the direction of Western ideals and methods of government, from working-class Germany as a result of 1914?
It is a tempting prophecy; but the outlook is not propitious. Germany, Prussian and South German, noble, bourgeois, and working class, has rallied round the Emperor in this crisis of national history, as the brutal and cynical directors of German policy calculated that she would. For the Social Democratic Movement the war comes with a peculiar appeal. It is a war against Russia, a country about which the German workman knows little and understands less, but which he considers to be the home of a reaction far blacker than that of his own country. A war of aggression against the Western Powers would have found the Social Democrats divided. By representing Russia as the aggressor and the Western Powers as the shameless allies of the "Mongol," German diplomacy, more successful within than without, made certain of enlisting Socialist support.
Moreover, the Socialists too have to pass through a natural reaction from their refusal to recognise the forces of Nationality—from Utopian dreams of international action by the peoples across the barriers of separate governments. For the first time in the history of the party, German Socialism has been allowed to be patriotic. It is an exhilarating and heartening experience, and it is certain to leave an indelible mark upon the spirit of the movement. The great party organisation, hitherto confined to the sterile work of agitation, is being used to cope with the many problems created by the war; and this work, rather than revolutionary agitation, is likely to occupy it for some time to come.
A veil has fallen upon Germany: German books and papers are stopped at our ports: we cannot know through what thoughts the German nation is passing. But as we look with the mind's eye across the North Sea, past devastated Belgium to the populous towns of industrial Germany, we see a people skilful, highly instructed, and mechanically intelligent, yet equally devoid either of personal initiative or of great and inspiring leadership. Two generations of Prussian education have left German public life practically empty of names of more than local reputation. Great changes are needed—a change of institutions and a change of spirit; yet whence this will come we cannot divine. Only, as democrats, we can say with confidence that if the true spirit of the German people is to be liberated from its long imprisonment, its freedom must be won, not from without, but from within. Not Europe but only the Germans can make Germany herself again.