Watching on the Rhine

by Violet R. Markham

Another curious feature of a General Election in Germany is the inadequacy of the Press arrangements. The papers supporting the various factions give the list of their own candidates, and these lists appear on the electioneering placards which are in great evidence. But I wholly failed to obtain any general list of the candidates in the Cologne area, let alone a list for the whole country. Equally difficult was it after the poll to get a detailed list of the losses and gains. Totals appeared but no names. It was necessary to hunt through a variety of party organs to find which of the candidates had been qualified as members by the quota of votes given to the party. Though I spent my time buying newspapers, I was never able to find a list setting out the new Reichstag in tabular form, with parties and localities attached to the various names. Electioneering literature was poor stuff, and the occasional picture posters not inspiring. The Deutschnationale had a dramatic placard of a drowning man sinking beneath heavy seas, to whom a lifebuoy with D.N.P. is being thrown as his one chance of salvation. But the subject of the placard could hardly have thrilled the electors. Posters devoted to the general turpitude of the other man’s views were common, and followed familiar lines. But certainly neither Press nor posters could compare with the organisation of the written and printed word which exists during a General Election in the United Kingdom.

It was an interesting experience night after night to watch a country groping its way along political paths but recently opened. The multiplicity of parties into which Germany is split is very confusing to a foreigner. The lines of demarcation in some cases are hard to grasp, and the political life of the Republic would gain in vigour and directness if certain of the groups were combined under one banner.

The two main groups, right and left, into which German political life falls are split up into various factions. The Socialist Party is divided into a constitutional right wing, the Social Democrats, and a revolutionary left wing, the “Unabhängige” or Independent Socialists. Since the revolution, various parties have been busily engaged changing their names, a fact which does not simplify the situation, as the old ones still survive in current conversation. The former Liberals—whose views have nothing in common with Liberalism in the English sense—are included to-day in a variety of Capitalist and Conservative groups from the Demokraten (mildly Liberal in our sense of the word) on the left to the Deutschnationale Partei on the right. This last-named tabernacle shelters the Junker and Agrarian elements, and is reactionary to the core. But it is less dangerous than the party which has risen into power of late and bids fair to be thoroughly mischievous, namely, the Deutsche Volkspartei. This is the party of Herr Stinnes and the “schwer Industrie.” It includes the great manufacturers and capitalists, as well as large sections of the Bourgeoisie, has ample funds at its command, and despite some perfunctory patter about democracy, is bitterly anti-democratic in feeling and outlook. These two main divisions of the Socialists and the Bourgeoisie face each other with uncompromising hostility. But the situation is further complicated by a clerical element standing between them, with which happily our own politics are untroubled.

The fervour and depth of Catholicism on the Rhineland has been one of the many surprises of Germany to me. In the Rhineland, therefore, questions affecting Church and State are much to the fore, especially the burning question of religious education in the schools. But the cross-correspondences between the Zentrum, the orthodox Catholic party, and the other groups are most bewildering. There are Christian Socialists and Socialists who are very much the reverse. The Zentrum has cooperated for certain purposes with the Social Democrats, which has resulted in a split in its own ranks and the formation of a new party of clerical extremists known as the Christliche Volkspartei.

Amid the welter of parties two conclusions force themselves on the observer. First, the orderly democratic elements in Germany are having a hard struggle to survive; second, it is essential for the Allies to have a responsible Government in Germany with principles approximating to those of the democratic peoples. To such a Government alone can they look for the execution of Germany’s Treaty obligations. Yet they have taken no steps to secure this end. I often think that Europe will make final shipwreck over the mistaken idea of German military unity still so firmly screwed into popular imagination at home. Could we but grasp the profound internal cleavage of ideas and ideals in Germany itself, common-sense, if no higher consideration, might suggest the importance of strengthening the hands of the only party from which we have anything to hope.

The democratic Government which came into existence at the time of the revolution has had an impossible task. It was confronted by hunger, defeat, despair, and the miseries which resulted from the blockade. It was not a strong Government—how could it be? Democracy is but a plant of struggling growth in Germany. The nation has had no training in self-government, and the efficient bureaucracy which still more or less survives is steeped in the old bad traditions. That under these circumstances the new Government was open to suspicion at every turn is natural enough. A more far-sighted policy, however, inspired by some faith and hope for the future would have realised that these struggling democratic ideals, if feeble, were sincere and would not have withheld all help from them. Also that the powerful internal enemies, the revolutionaries on the one hand, the reactionaries on the other, were waiting their opportunity to destroy them. Such a policy, could it have illumined the councils of Versailles, might at least have seen the folly of associating the first efforts in democratic government in Germany with rebuffs and humiliations of all kinds. The German working-man means to stand by the revolution, but hunger and general demoralisation are openings on which the reactionaries and revolutionaries are not slow to seize.

These reflections were driven home to me in a most emphatic way at a meeting of the Deutsche Volkspartei which was addressed by a distinguished professor from Berlin. The Deutsche Volkspartei excites peculiar wrath in Socialist circles. The Junkers and the Right Wing extremists, left to themselves, are not dangerous. But this great Conservative capitalist block, fortified? by the funds of the big business men and the “schwer Industrie,” is considered, and rightly, a formidable adversary.

The Professor’s speech was in its own way first-rate. From premises which personally I detested he developed his theme with extraordinary ability, piling argument upon argument with a cumulative force which swept everything before it. Personally I was very thankful it did not fall to my lot to answer some of the points scored.

The Gürzenich Hall was crowded on this occasion, and the fashionable ladies who sat on the platform belonged to a different world from that of the Social Democratic women of an earlier meeting. As regards the masculine supporters of the Volkspartei, I was reminded of Mr. Keynes’s famous description of the present House of Commons, “a lot of hard-faced men who looked as though they had done very well out of the war.” This was particularly the case with the chairman, who had “schwer Industrie” written all over him. The Professor’s personality was more attractive than that of many of his supporters—a grey-haired, grey-bearded man, with a fine head and full strong voice. He spoke without a note of any kind, never once hesitating for a word. He dealt skilfully with occasional interruptions, for the meeting was not composed of unanimous supporters.

The speech began characteristically with a eulogy of Bismarck. Bismarck had been reproached for a policy of blood and iron and force. But blood and iron and force, not the pratings of the democratic visionaries of the National Assembly at Frankfurt in 1848, had created and sustained modern Germany. It was the absence of blood and iron which was responsible for their present downfall. Not that the armies in the field were ever defeated; Germany’s downfall sprang from the blockade and the fanatical hatred of England. Yet not from the blockade alone: all might have been saved but for the revolution which had brought about their final undoing. It was the traitors from within, not the enemies from without, who had finally wrecked and destroyed Bismarck’s work. Social Democracy had been the ruin of the country. It had delivered the nation tied and bound into the hands of their enemies. Democracy, what was democracy? The firstfruits of German democracy had been the Treaty of Versailles with its intolerable burdens. Belief in democratic principles; trust in the professions of democratic leaders? The speaker laughed bitterly. Had not President Wilson proclaimed that America was fighting German militarism, not the German people? Had not Lloyd George said the same thing, and that no yard of German soil was desired by the Alliance? The Social Democrats might believe these fables, on the strength of which they sold the pass to the bitter enemies of the Fatherland. The result was the Treaty of Versailles. The Socialists talked of a peace of reconciliation, of international relations, of stretching out hands to the democracies in other countries. What folly to trust to such shifting sands, which had resulted in the German people being swallowed up in misery. The Social Democrats had promised them freedom. “Freedom,” said the speaker with bitter scorn; “are you free in the Rhineland?” No; there was only one way by which a happier future could be reached—the re-creation of Germany on strong nationalist lines; a Germany resting on force, purged of democratic and international follies, with her eyes fixed on herself and the principles of Bismarck well to the fore again. To do this the defeat of Social Democracy and Socialism at the polls was the first essential. A Government must be returned which would know how to safeguard the welfare of the Fatherland. Unceasing work was an essential of reconstruction; the eight hours’ day was another colossal blunder recently made. Here and there the speaker threw an occasional sop to the democratic Cerberus. Perhaps it was true that they had relied a little too much on force alone in the past, and had forgotten the old idealistic teaching of the poets and philosophers. And again the rule of bayonets was over; government now rested on the will of the people—a good old tag which appeared towards the end of the speech. If the Volkspartei have their way, how much will shortly remain of the will of the people in Germany?