[ [62] A surprisingly large number of Americans cannot or will not believe that a prince or a count can be a real democrat. This is plainly due to a too prevalent confusion of the words democratic with republican. All republics are, in theory at least, democratic, but a monarchist can consistently be a democrat. The two most democratic countries in the world are Denmark and Norway, yet both are kingdoms. The democratic sentiments of the men named above, with the possible exception of one, were of no recent growth; they long antedated the revolution.
Taken as a whole, the party stood far to the left. Wolff, at the extreme left of his organization, might be described either as a bourgeois Socialist or a Socialistic bourgeois politician. The recruits from the former National-Liberal Party were less radical, but even they subscribed to a platform which called for the nationalization (socialization) of a long list of essential industries, notably mines and water and electrical power, and, in general, for sweeping economic reforms and the most direct participation of the people in the government. The fact that the new party was chiefly financed by big Jewish capitalists caused it to be attacked by anti-Semites and proletarians alike, but this detracted little from its strength at the polls, since Germany's anti-Semites were never found in any considerable numbers among the bourgeois parties of the Left, and the proletarians were already for the most part adherents of one of the Socialist factions.
The campaign for the elections to the National Assembly was conducted with great energy and equally great bitterness by all parties. Despite an alleged shortage of paper which had for months made it impossible for the newspapers to print more than a small part of the advertisements submitted to them, tons of paper were used for handbills and placards. The streets, already filthy enough, were strewn ankle-deep in places with appeals for this or that party and vilifications of opponents. Aëroplanes dropped thousands of dodgers over the chief cities. New daily papers, most of them unlovely excrescences on the body of the press, made their appearance and secured paper grants for their consumption.
One feature of the campaign illustrated strikingly what had already been clear to dispassionate observers: Germany's new government was unashamedly a party government first and a general government second. Majority Socialist election posters were placed in public buildings, railway stations, etc., to the exclusion of all other parties. Its handbills were distributed by government employees and from government automobiles and aëroplanes. The bourgeois Hallesche Zeitung's paper supply was cut in half in order that the new Socialist Volkszeitung might be established, and its protest was dismissed by the Soldiers' Council with the statement that the Volkszeitung was "more important." Not even the most reactionary of the old German governments would have dared abuse its power in this manner. It may be doubted whether the revolutionary government was at all conscious of the impropriety of its course, but even if it had been it would have made no difference. One of the great sources of strength of Socialism is its conviction that all means are sacred for the furtherance of the class struggle.
The Spartacans had boasted that the elections would not be permitted to be held, but the decided attitude of the government made their boast an empty one. Soldiers in steel helmets, their belts filled with hand-grenades and carrying rifles with fixed bayonets, guarded the polling places whereever trouble was expected. In Harburg the ballot-boxes were burned, and reports of disorders came from two or three small districts elsewhere, but the election as a whole was quietly and honestly conducted. Election day in Manhattan has often seen more disorders than were reported from all Germany on January 19th.
The result of the election contained no surprises; it was, in general, practically what had been forecast by the best observers. The Majority Socialists, who had hoped for an absolute majority but had not expected it, polled about 43 per cent of the total popular vote and secured 163 delegates to the National Convention. This was an increase of nearly 8 per cent since the last general election of 1912. The Independent Socialists demonstrated considerable strength in Greater Berlin, but only one in every twenty-five of the whole country's voters supported them and only twenty-two of their followers were elected. Kurt Eisner, Minister-President of Bavaria, failed of election although his name was on the ticket in more than twenty election districts.
The total membership of the National Convention was to have been 433 delegates, but the French authorities in charge of the troops occupying Alsace-Lorraine refused to permit elections to be held there, which reduced the assembly's membership to 421. A majority was thus 211, and the two Socialist parties, with a combined total of 185, could accomplish nothing without 26 additional votes from some bourgeois party. As it later developed, moreover, the government party could count on the support of the Independents only in matters where Socialist solidarity was sentimentally involved; on matters affecting economic policies there was much more kinship between the Majority Socialists and the Democrats than between them and the followers of Haase.
The Democrats, with 75 delegates, were the second strongest non-Socialist party, the former Clericals having 88. By virtue of their position midway between Right and Left they held the real balance of power.
The National People's Party, the former Conservatives and Free Conservatives, made a surprisingly good showing in the elections, securing 42 delegates. This number, however, included the delegates of the Middle and the National-Liberal parties of Bavaria and the Citizens' Party and Peasants' and Vineyardists' League of Württemberg. The remnant of the old National-Liberal Party was able to elect only 21 delegates.
There were, in addition to the parties enumerated, the Bavarian Peasants' League with 4 delegates, the Schleswig-Holstein Peasants' and Farm-Laborers' Democratic League with 1 delegate, the Brunswick State Election Association with 1 and the German-Hanoverian Party (Guelphs) with 4 delegates. Not even the urgent need of uniting dissevered elements so far as possible could conquer the old German tendency to carry metaphysical hairsplitting into politics. The German Reichstags regularly had from twelve to sixteen different parties, and even then there were generally two or three delegates who found themselves unable to agree with the tenets of any one of these parties and remained unattached, the "wild delegates" (die Wilden), as they were termed. There were ten parties in the National Assembly, and one of these, as has been said, was a combination of five parties.