Ebert belongs to that class which the French call the petite bourgeoisie, the lower middle class. He possesses all the solid, domestic virtues of this class, and is a living exemplification of old copy-book maxims about honesty as the best policy and faithfulness in little things. Without a trace of brilliancy and without any unusual mental qualities, his greatest strength lies in an honesty and dependability which, in the long run, so often outweigh great mental gifts. Few political leaders have ever enjoyed the confidence and trust of their followers to a greater degree.
The ministry chosen was headed by Scheidemann as Minister-President. Other members were: Minister of Defense (army and navy), Noske; Interior, Hugo Preuss; Justice, Sendsberg; Commerce, Hermann Müller; Labor, Bauer; Foreign Affairs, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau; Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Baron von Richthofen; Finance, Dr. Schiffer; Posts and Telegraphs, Geisberg. Erzberger, David and Wissell were made ministers without portfolio.
The first sessions of the National Assembly made on the whole a good impression. The members were for the most part earnest men and women, fully up to the intellectual average of legislative bodies anywhere; there were comparatively few among them who were compromised by relations with the old government, and these were not in a position to do no harm. The extreme Right was openly monarchic, but the members of this group realized fully the hopelessness of any attempt to restore either the Hohenzollerns or a monarchic state-form at this time, and manifested their loyalty to the former ruler only by objecting vigorously to Social-Democratic attacks on the Kaiser or to depreciation of the services of the crown in building up the Empire. Apart from the pathologically hysterical conduct of the Independent Socialists, and particularly of the three women delegates of that party, the assembly's proceedings were carried on in what was, by European parliamentary standards, a dignified manner.
From the very beginning, however, the proceedings were sicklied o'er by the pale cast of care. After the sufferings and losses of more than four years of war, the country was now rent by internal dissensions and fratricidal strife. To the costs of war had been added hundreds of millions lost to the state through the extravagance, dishonesty or incompetence of revolutionary officials and particularly Soviets. The former net earnings of the state railways of nearly a billion marks had been converted into a deficit of two billions. Available sources of revenue had been almost exhausted. The German currency had depreciated more than sixty per cent. Industry was everywhere crippled by senseless strikes.
An insight into Germany's financial situation was given by the report of Finance Minister Schiffer, who disclosed that the prodigious sum of nineteen billion marks would be required in the coming year to pay interest charges alone. The war, he declared, had cost Germany one hundred and sixty-one billion marks, which exceeded by nearly fourteen billions the credits that had been granted.
The incubus of the terrible armistice terms rested upon the assembly. Enemy newspapers, especially those of Paris, were daily publishing estimates of indemnities to be demanded from Germany, and the most modest of these far exceeded Germany's total wealth of all descriptions. Naïve German editors faithfully republished these articles, failing to realize that they were part of the enemy propaganda and designed further to weaken the Germans' morale and increase their feeling of helplessness and despondency. Not even the fiercest German patriots and loyalists of the old school could entirely shake off the feeling of helplessness that overshadowed and influenced every act of the National Assembly.
The Majority Socialists had come to realize more fully the difference between theory and practice. The official organ of the German Federation of Labor had discovered a week earlier that "the socialistic conquests of the revolution can be maintained only if countries competing with German industry adopt similar institutions." There were already concrete proofs available that socialization, even without regard to foreign competition, was not practical under the conditions prevailing in the country. At least two large factory owners in Northern Germany had handed their plants over to their workmen and asked them to take full charge of manufacture and sale. In both instances the workmen had, after a trial, requested the owners to resume charge of the factories.
How shall we socialize when there is nothing to socialize? asked thoughtful men. The answer was obvious. Gegen den Tod ist kein Kraut gewachsen (there is no remedy against death) says an old German proverb, and industry was practically dead. The government party now discovered what Marx and Engels had discovered nearly fifty years before.
"The practical application of these principles will always and everywhere depend upon historically existing conditions. * * * The Commune has supplied the proof that the laboring class cannot simply take possession of the machinery of state and set it in motion for its own purposes." [63]
[ [63] Introduction to the second edition of the Manifesto of 1849, quoted in chapter iii.