The Governments of Europe Part 19

[Footnote 335: Arts. 30 and 31. Dodd, Modern Const.i.tutions, I., 334.]

II. ORGANIZATION AND POWERS OF THE REICHSTAG

*239. Sessions and Officers.*--The const.i.tution stipulates that the Reichstag and the Bundesrath shall meet annually. Beyond this, and the further requirement that the Reichstag shall never be in session when the Bundesrath is not, the Imperial Government is left entirely free in respect to the convening of the representative body.[336] The summons is issued by the Emperor and the sessions are opened by him, in person or by proxy. By him the a.s.sembly may be prorogued (though not more than once during a session, and never for a longer period than thirty days without its own consent); by him also, with the a.s.sent of the Bundesrath, it may be dissolved.[337] The chamber validates the election of its members, regulates its own procedure and discipline, and elects its president, vice-presidents, and secretaries.[338] Under standing orders adopted February 10, 1876, the president and vice-president are chosen at the opening of the first session following a general election for a temporary term of four weeks, and upon the expiration of this period an election takes place for the remainder of the session. At the opening of each succeeding session an election of these officials for the session takes place at once. The secretary is chosen at the beginning of each session for the entire session.

[Footnote 336: Mention has been made of the regulation that, following a dissolution prior to the end of the five-year term, the chamber shall be convoked within ninety days. It will be recalled, also, that the Bundesrath may be convoked without the Reichstag.]

[Footnote 337: Nominally by a resolution of the Bundesrath, with the consent of the Emperor. Art.

24. Dodd, Modern Const.i.tutions, I., 333.]

[Footnote 338: Art. 27. Ibid.]

*240. Abtheilungen and Committees.*--At the opening of a session the entire membership of the Reichstag is divided by lot into seven Abtheilungen, or bureaus, as nearly equal as it is possible to make them. The bureaus of the French Chamber of Deputies are reconst.i.tuted once a month, and those of the Italian once in two months, but those of the Reichstag are maintained unchanged throughout a session, unless upon motion of as many as thirty members the body decides upon a fresh distribution. The functions of the bureaus comprise, in the main, (p. 227) the pa.s.sing upon the credentials of members of the chamber and the designating of members of committees. There is in the Reichstag but one standing committee--that on elections. It is perpetuated throughout a session. All other committees are made up, as occasion requires, by the appointment by ballot of an equal number of members by each of the seven bureaus; although, in point of fact, the preparation of committee lists falls largely to the party leaders of the chamber. The function of committees is the preliminary consideration of measures and the reporting of them and of evidence relating to them, to the chamber, Bills are not, however, in all cases referred to committees.

*241. Methods of Business.*--Measures proposed for enactment pa.s.s through the three readings which have come to be customary among modern legislative a.s.semblies. Debate is carried on under regulations closely resembling those which prevail in the British House of Commons and distinctly less restrictive than those in vogue in the French Chamber of Deputies. Members of the Bundesrath, to whom is a.s.signed a special bench, possess the right to appear and to speak at pleasure.

Debaters address the chamber from the tribune or from their seats as they choose, and they speak whenever they can secure the recognition of the presiding official, not, as in France, in the hard and fast order indicated by a previously prepared written list. Like the Speaker of the House of Commons, the president of the Reichstag is a strictly non-partisan moderator. A fixed tradition of the office is that during debate the chair shall recognize alternately the supporters and the opponents of the measure under consideration. As a general rule, closure of debate may be ordered upon the initiative of thirty members.

Unlike the sittings of the Bundesrath, which take place invariably behind closed doors, those of the Reichstag are, by const.i.tutional provision, public. Under the standing orders, however, the body may go into secret session, on motion of the president, or of ten members.

Publicity is further a.s.sured by the const.i.tutional stipulation that "no one shall be held responsible for truthful reports of the proceedings of the public sessions of the Reichstag."[339] Measures are carried by absolute majority; and, while discussion may proceed in the absence of a quorum, no vote or other action is valid unless there is present a majority of the full membership of the body, that is, since 1873, 199.

[Footnote 339: Art. 22. Dodd, Modern Const.i.tutions, I., 333.]

*242. Powers.*--The legislative power of the Empire is vested in the Reichstag and the Bundesrath conjointly, and a majority of the votes of both bodies is necessary for the enactment of a law. So declares the const.i.tution. The legislative functions of the popular chamber (p. 228) are, however, in practice distinctly subordinate to those of the Bundesrath. The Reichstag possesses no such power of legislative initiative and discretion as is possessed by the popular chambers of Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. Its consent is necessary for the enactment of every law, for the adoption of every const.i.tutional amendment, and for the ratification of every treaty affecting matters within the domain of Imperial legislation. But bills, including those relating to finance, originate ordinarily with the Chancellor and the Bundesrath; the procedure followed in the shaping of revenue and military measures puts the Reichstag distinctly at a disadvantage; and, at the best, the part which the chamber can play in the public policy of the Empire is negative and subsidiary. It can block legislation and discuss at length the policy of the Government, but it is not vested by the const.i.tution with power sufficient to make it an effective instrument of control. It is within the competence of the Bundesrath, with the a.s.sent of the Emperor, to dissolve the popular chamber at any time, and, as has been pointed out, such action is taken without an iota of the ministerial responsibility which in other nations ordinarily accompanies the right of dissolution. On several occasions since 1871 the Reichstag has been dissolved with the sheer intent of putting an end to its obstructionism.[340]

[Footnote 340: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 257.]

The standing orders of the chamber make mention of the right of interpellation, and resort is occasionally had to this characteristic continental legislative practice. There are no ministers, however, to whom an interpellation may be addressed except the Chancellor, and even he has no right to appear in the Reichstag save as a member of the Bundesrath. The consequence is that interpellations are addressed, in practice, to the Bundesrath. It is only where the parliamentary system prevails, as in France and Italy, that the device of interpellation can be made to a.s.sume much importance. The possibility of a larger opportunity for interpellation, which should involve the right of the chamber to adopt resolutions declaring satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the answer made, was warmly, but on the whole inconclusively, discussed in the Reichstag in 1912.[341]

[Footnote 341: On the Reichstag see Howard, The German Empire, Chap. 5; A. Lebon, Le Reichstag allemand, in _Annales de l'ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques_, April, 1889; ibid., etudes sur l'Allemagne politique, Chap. 2; Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, ---- 32-38; H.

Robalsky, Der deutsche Reichstag (Berlin, 1897); G.

Leser, Untersuchungen uber das Wahlprufungsrecht des deutschen Reichstags (Leipzig, 1908). There is a full discussion of German methods of legislation in Laband, _op. cit._, ---- 54-59.]

III. THE RISE OF POLITICAL PARTIES (p. 229)

In Germany, as in continental countries generally, the number of political groups is legion. Many are too small and unstable to be ent.i.tled properly to the designation of parties; and, in truth, of even the larger ones none has ever become so formidable numerically as to acquire a majority in the popular chamber. For the enactment of measures the Government is obliged to rely always upon some sort of coalition, or, at best, upon the members of a group which for the time being holds the balance between two opposing alignments.

*243. Conservatives and Progressives.*--The party situation of the present day has been reached in consequence of the gradual disintegration of the two great political groups with which Prussia entered upon the period of Bismarck's ministry; and to this day the parties of the German Empire and those of the Prussian kingdom are largely identical.[342] The two original Prussian groups were the Conservatives and the Fortschritt, or Progressives, of which the one comprised, throughout the middle portion of the nineteenth century, the supporters of the Government and the other its opponents. The Conservatives were pre-eminently the party of the landed aristocracy of northern and eastern Germany. During twenty years prior to 1867 they dominated completely the Prussian court and army. Following the Austrian war of 1866, however, the Conservative ascendancy was broken and there set in that long process of party dissolution by which German political life has been brought to its present confused condition. To begin with, each of the two original parties broke into two distinct groups. From the Conservatives sprang the Frei Conservativen, or Free Conservatives; from the Fortschritt, the National-Liberal-Partei, or National Liberals. In the one case the new group comprised the more advanced element of the old one; in the other, the more moderate; so that, in the order of radicalism, the parties of the decade following 1866 were the Conservatives, the Free Conservatives, the National Liberals, and the Fortschrittspartei, or Radicals. Among these four groups Bismarck was able to win for his policy of German unification the support of the more moderate, that is to say, the second and third. The ultra-Conservatives clung to the particularistic regime of earlier days, and with them the genius of "blood and iron" broke definitely in 1866. The Free Conservatives comprised at the outset simply those elements of the original (p. 230) Conservative party who were willing to follow Bismarck.

[Footnote 342: To so great an extent is this true that, having described in this place the parties of the Empire, it will not be necessary subsequently to allude at length to those of Prussia.]

*244. Rise and Preponderance of the National Liberals.*--Similarly among the Progressives there was division upon the att.i.tude to be a.s.sumed toward the Bismarckian programme. The more radical wing of the party, i.e., that which maintained the name and the policies of the original Fortschritt, refused to abandon its opposition to militarism and monarchism, opposed the const.i.tution of 1867 for its illiberality, and withheld from Bismarck's government all substantial support. The larger portion of the party members, however were willing to subordinate for a time to Bismarck's nationalizing projects the contest which the united Fortschritt had long been waging in behalf of const.i.tutionalism. The party of no compromise was strongest in Berlin and the towns of east Prussia. It was almost exclusively Prussian. The National Liberals, on the contrary, became early an essentially German, rather than simply a Prussian, party. Even before 1871 they comprised, in point both of numbers and of power, the preponderating party in both Prussia and the Confederation as a whole; and after 1871, when the Nationalists of the southern states cast in their lot with the National Liberals, the predominance of that party was effectually a.s.sured. Upon the National Liberals as the party of unity and uniformity Bismarck relied absolutely for support in the upbuilding of the Empire. It was only in 1878, after the party had lost control of the Reichstag, in consequence of the reaction against Liberalism attending the great religious contest known as the Kulturkampf, that the Chancellor was in a position to throw off the not infrequently galling bonds of the Liberal alliance.

*245. The Newer Groups: the Centre.*--Meanwhile the field occupied by the various parties that have been named was, from an early date, cut into by an increasing number of newly organized parties and groups.

Most important among these were the Clericals, or Centre, and the Social Democrats. The origins of the Centre may be traced to the project which was formulated in December, 1870, to found a new party, a party which should be essentially Catholic, and which should have for its purpose the defense of society against radicalism, of the states against the central government, and of the schools against secularization. A favorite saying of the founders was that "at the birth of the Empire Justice was not present." The party, gaining strength first in the Rhenish and Polish provinces of Prussia and in Bavaria, was able in the elections of 1871 to win a total of sixty seats. Employed by the Catholic clergy during the decade that followed to maintain the cause of the papacy against the machinations of Bismarck, the party early struck root deeply; and by reason of (p. 231) the absolute identification in the public mind of its interests with the interests of the Catholic Church, ensuring its preponderance in the states of the south, and also by reason of the fact that it has always been more successful than any of its rivals in maintaining compactness of organization, it became, and has continued almost uninterruptedly to the present time, the strongest numerically of all political groups within the Reichstag.

*246. The Newer Groups: the Social Democrats.*--The Social Democratic party was founded in 1869 under the leadership of Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel. In 1863 there had been organized at Leipzig, under the inspiration of the eloquent Marxist Ferdinand La.s.salle, a Universal German Workingman's a.s.sociation. Between the two bodies there was for a time keen rivalry, but at a congress held at Gotha, in May, 1875, they (together with a number of other socialistic societies) were merged in one organization, which has continued to this day to be known as the Social Democratic party. The development of socialism in the Empire between 1870 and 1880, in respect to both numbers and efficiency of organization, was phenomenal. At the parliamentary elections of 1871 the Social Democratic vote was 124,655 (three per cent of the total) and two Social Democrats were chosen to the Reichstag. In 1874 the popular vote was 351,952, and nine members were elected; in 1877 it was 493,288, and the number of successful candidates was twelve. By the Emperor William I. and by his chancellor; Bismarck, as indeed by the governing and well-to-do cla.s.ses generally, the progress of the movement was viewed with frankly avowed apprehension. Most of the great projects of the Imperial Government were opposed by the Social Democrats, and the members of the party were understood to be enemies of the entire existing order, and even of civilization itself. Two attempts in 1878 upon the life of the Emperor, made by men who were socialists, but disavowed by the socialists as a body, afforded the authorities an opportunity to enter upon a campaign of socialist repression, and from 1878 to 1890 anti-socialist legislation of the most thoroughgoing character was regularly on the statute books and was in no slight measure enforced. At the same time that effort was being made to stamp out socialist propaganda a remarkable series of social reforms was undertaken with the deliberate purpose not only of promoting the public well-being, but of cutting the ground from under the socialists' feet, or, as some one has observed, of "curing the Empire of socialism by inoculation." The most important steps taken in this direction comprised the inauguration of sickness insurance in 1883, of accident insurance in 1884, and of old-age and invalidity insurance in 1889.

For a time the measures of the government seemed to accomplish (p. 232) their purpose, and the official press loudly proclaimed that socialism in Germany was extinct. In reality, however, socialism thrived on persecution. In the hour of Bismarck's apparent triumph the socialist propaganda was being pushed covertly in every corner of the Empire. A party organ known as the _Social Democrat_ was published in Switzerland, and every week thousands of copies found their way across the border and were pa.s.sed from hand to hand among determined readers and converts. A compact organization was maintained, a treasury was established and kept well filled, and with truth the Social Democrats aver to-day that in no small measure they owe their superb organization to the Bismarckian era of repression. At the elections of 1878 the party cast but 437,158 votes, but in 1884 its vote was 549,990 (9.7 per cent of the whole) and the contingent of representatives returned to the Reichstag numbered twenty-four. In 1890 the socialist vote attained the enormous total of 1,427,298 (19.7 per cent of the whole), and the number of representatives was increased to thirty-five. Repression was manifestly a failure, and in 1890 the Reichstag, with the sanction of the new emperor, William II., wisely declined to renew the statute under which proscription had been employed.

*247. Minor Parties.*--Aside from the Centre and the Social Democrats, the newer party groups in Germany--the Guelfs, the Poles, the Danes, the Alsatians, the Antisemites, etc.--are small and relatively unimportant. All are particularistic and irreconcilable; all are organized on the basis of local, racial, or religious interests.

Apart, indeed, from the National Liberals and the Socialists, it cannot be said that any one of the German political groups, large or small, is broadly national, in either its tenets or its const.i.tuency.

The Guelfs, or Hanoverische Rechtspartei, comprise the irreconcilables among the old Hanoverian n.o.bility who refuse to recognize the validity of the extinction of the ancient Hanoverian dynasty by the deposing of George V. in 1866. As late as 1898 they returned to the Reichstag nine members. In 1903 they elected but five, and in 1907 their representation was reduced to a single deputy. In 1912 their quota became again five. The Poles comprise the Slavic voters of the districts of West Prussia, Posen, and Silesia, who continue to send to the Reichstag members who protest against the incorporation of the Poles in Prussia and in the Empire. At the elections of 1903 they secured sixteen seats, at those of 1907 twenty, and at those of 1912 eighteen. The Danes of northern Schleswig keep up some demand for annexation to Denmark, and measures looking toward Germanization are warmly resented; but the number of people concerned--not more than 150,000--is so small that their political power is almost _nil_. (p. 233) They have, as a rule, but a single spokesman in the Reichstag. The Alsatians comprise the autonomists of Alsace-Lorraine, and the Antisemites form a group whose original purpose was resistance to Jewish influence and interests.

IV. PARTY POLITICS AFTER 1878

*248. Shifting "Government" Parties.*--To rehea.r.s.e here the details of German party history during the period since the Government's break with the Liberals in 1878 is impossible. A few of the larger facts only may be mentioned. Between 1878 and 1887 there was in the Reichstag no one great party, nor even any stable coalition of parties, upon which the Government could rely for support. For the time being, in 1879, Bismarck allied with the Centre to bring about the adoption of his newly-framed policy of protection and of the famous Frankenstein clause relative to the matricular contributions of the states.[343] The National Liberals, left in the lurch, broke up, and in 1881 the remnant of the party was able to obtain only forty-five seats. After the elections of that year the Centre commanded in the Reichstag a plurality of forty. The upshot was that, in the effort to procure the dependable support of the Centre, the Government gradually abandoned the Kulturkampf, and for a time the Centre virtually succeeded to the position occupied prior to 1878 by the National Liberals. The elections of 1887, however, again changed the situation. The Centre retained a plurality of some twenty seats, but the Conservatives, Free Conservatives, and National Liberals formed a coalition and between them obtained a total of 220 seats and, accordingly, the control of the Reichstag. Thereupon the Conservatives became the Government's princ.i.p.al reliance and the Centre dropped for a time into a position of neutrality. At the elections of 1890 the coalition, which in truth had been built up by the Government on the basis of a cartel, or agreement, suffered heavy losses. Of 397 seats it carried only 130,[344] while the Centre alone procured 116.

Coincident with the overturn came the dismissal of Bismarck and the elevation to the chancellorship of General von Caprivi. Throughout his years of office (1890-1894) Caprivi was able to rely habitually upon the support of no single party or group of parties, and for the enactment of its measures the Government was obliged to seek (p. 234) a.s.sistance now in one quarter and now in another, according as circ.u.mstances dictated.

[Footnote 343: This measure provided that each year all proceeds from the Imperial customs and tobacco tax in excess of 130,000,000 marks should be distributed among the several states in proportion to their population. Its author was Frankenstein, a leader of the Centre.]

[Footnote 344: Conservatives 65, Free Conservatives 24, National Liberals 41.]

*249. The Agrarian Movement and the Rise of the Bloc.*--Two or three developments of the period stand out with some distinctness. One was the break-up, apparently for all time, of the Fortschrittspartei, or Radical party, in consequence of the elections of 1893. A second was the rise of the Government's prolonged contest with the Agrarians. The Agrarian group, of which indeed one hears as early as 1876, comprised princ.i.p.ally the grain-growing landholders of northern and eastern Germany. By treaties concluded in 1892-1894 with Austria-Hungary, Italy, Belgium, Russia, and other nations, German import duties on grain were considerably reduced in return for advantages given to German manufacturers. Low duties meant cheap foodstuffs, and in the negotiation of these treaties the Government found itself supported with enthusiasm not only by the Centre, but also by the Social Democrats and the surviving Radicals. The Conservatives were divided.

Those of Agrarian sympathies (especially the Prussian landholders) allied themselves with the forces of opposition. But the remainder gave the Government some measure of support. And from this last-mentioned fact arose a final political development of large significance during the Caprivi period, namely, the creation of that _bloc_, or affiliation, of Centre and Conservatives (popularly referred to as the "blue-black" _bloc_) upon which the Government was destined regularly to rely through upwards of a decade and a half.

During the chancellorship of Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst (1894-1900) the struggle with the Agrarians was continued and the preponderance of the _bloc_ became an established fact. Finally, should be mentioned the rapidly accelerating growth of the Social Democracy. In 1893 the popular party cast a total of 1,876,738 votes and elected forty-four representatives. In 1896 its vote was 2,007,076 and the number of members elected was fifty-seven. In 1903 its vote rose to the enormous proportions of 3,008,000 (24 per cent of the total, and larger than that of any other single party), and the quota in the Reichstag was increased to seventy-nine.

*250. The Elections of 1903 and 1907.*--At the elections of 1903 the _bloc_ suffered numerically a loss of strength. The Centre obtained 102 seats, the Conservatives 53, and the Free Conservatives, or "Party of the Empire," 22--an aggregate of only 177. By deft management, however, Chancellor von Bulow (1900-1908) contrived to play off through several years the opposing forces, and so to preserve, for all practical purposes, the working efficiency of the Government coalition. The elections of January, 1907, brought on by a dissolution of the Reichstag after the refusal of that body to vote the (p. 235) Government's colonial estimates, were of interest princ.i.p.ally by reason of the continued show of strength of the Centre and the falling off of the Social Democrats in their representation in the Reichstag.

In the practical working out of political forces it had come about that the Centre occupied in the chamber a pivotal position of such consequence that the Government was in effect absolutely dependent upon the vote of that party for the enactment of its measures.

Naturally enough, the party, realizing its power, was p.r.o.ne to put its support upon a contractual basis and to drive with the Government a hard bargain for the votes which it commanded. While hardly in a position to get on without Clerical a.s.sistance, the Government in 1907 would have been willing enough to see the Centre's power and independence broken. Not only, however, did the Centre not lose seats by that contest; it in fact realized a gain of two. On the other hand, there was compensation for the Government in the fact that the Social Democrats fell back. They polled a total of 3,250,000 popular votes, as compared with 3,008,000 in 1903; but by reason of the antiquated distribution of seats which prevails in the Empire, the unusual vote polled by other parties, and also the unusual co-operation of the party groups opposed to the Social Democrats, their representation in the Reichstag was cut from 79 to 43.[345]

[Footnote 345: The total number of popular votes cast in the election was 10,857,000, of which number government candidates received 4,962,000, and opposition candidates 5,895,000. The numerical strength of the various elements composing the Reichstag consequent upon the elections of 1903 and 1907 was as follows:

_1903_ _1907_ _Seats_ _Seats_ _gained_ _lost_

Centre 102 104 2 0 Conservatives 53 58 5 0 Free Conservatives 22 22 0 0 National Liberals 51 56 5 0 Social Democrats 79 43 0 36 Radicals 42 50 8 0 Antisemites and Economic Union 22 30 8 0 Poles 16 20 4 0 Liberal Union 10 13 3 0 Volkspartei (Democrats of South) 6 7 1 0 Alsatians 10 7 0 3 Guelfs or Hanoverians 5 1 0 4 Danes 1 1 6 0 Independents 0 7 7 0

Total 397 397 43 43]

V. PARTIES SINCE 1907 (p. 236)

*251. The Bulow Bloc.*--The period covered by the life of the Reichstag elected in 1907 was remarkable in German political history chiefly by reason of the prolonged struggle for the establishment of parliamentary government which took place within it--a struggle which had its beginning, indeed, in the deadlock by which the dissolution of 1906 was occasioned, which reached its climax in the fiscal debates of 1908-1909, and which during the years that followed gradually subsided, leaving both the status of parties and the const.i.tutional order of the Empire essentially as they were at the beginning. Even before the dissolution of 1906 the Conservative-Centre _bloc_ was effectually dissolved, princ.i.p.ally by the defection of the Centre, and through upwards of three years it was replaced by an affiliation, known commonly as the "_Bulow bloc_," of the Conservatives and the Liberals. This combination, however, was never substantial, and in the course of the conflict over the Government's proposed budget of November, 1908, there was a return to the old alignment, and throughout ensuing years the Conservative-Clerical _bloc_ remained a preponderating factor in the political situation.

*252. The Elections of 1912: Parties and Issues.*--The Reichstag of 1907 was dissolved at the termination of its five-year period, and in January, 1912, there was elected a new chamber, the thirteenth since the creation of the Empire. The contest was pre-eminently one of measures rather than of men, but the public interest which it excited was extraordinary. Broadly, the line was drawn between the Government and the parties of the _bloc_, on the one hand, and the more purely popular parties, especially the National Liberals, the Radicals, and the Social Democrats, on the other;[346] and the issues were chiefly such as were supplied by the spirit, purposes, and methods of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg and his Conservative-Clerical allies.

Of the alleged reactionism of the Government parties there was widespread complaint. They were held responsible for the fiscal reform of 1909 which imposed burdens unduly heavy on industry and commerce, while sparing land and invested capital; they were charged with re-establishing the yoke of the Catholic Centre upon the Lutheran (p. 237) majority; and they were reproached for having failed to redeem their promise to liberalize the antiquated franchise arrangements of Prussia. The Conservatives in particular were attacked on the ground of their continued monopoly of patronage and of power. On the whole, however, the most important of practical issues was that of the tariff. Throughout a twelvemonth discontent occasioned by the high cost of living had been general and the Government had been besought by munic.i.p.alities, workingmen's organizations, and political societies to inaugurate a project for the reduction of the duties imposed upon imported foodstuffs. The demand was in vain and the country was given to understand by the Chancellor that the Government, under Conservative-Agrarian mastery, would stand or fall with "protection for the nation's work" as its battle-cry. Upon this question the National Liberals, being protectionist by inclination, stood with the Government, but the Radicals, the Social Democrats, and some of the minor groups a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of clear-cut opposition.

[Footnote 346: The gravest abuse in connection with the conduct of campaigns and elections in Germany is the pressure which the Government brings to bear systematically upon the enormous official population and upon railway employees (alone numbering 600,000) to vote Conservative, or, in districts where there is no Conservative candidate, Centrist. This pressure is applied through the local bureaucratic organs, princ.i.p.ally the Landrath of the Kreis, who not uncommonly is a youthful official of n.o.ble origin, related to some important landed family, and a rigid Conservative. It has been estimated that official influence controls a million votes at every national election.]

*253. The Results and Their Significance.*--The total number of candidates in the 397 const.i.tuencies was 1,428. The Social Democrats alone had a candidate in every const.i.tuency, a fact which emphasizes the broadly national character which that party has acquired. The National Liberals had candidates in 200 const.i.tuencies, the Centre in 183, the Radicals in 175, and the Conservatives in 132. A second ballot was required in 191 const.i.tuencies, or nearly one-half of the whole number. The final results of the election justified completely the general expectation of observers that the Social Democrats would realize enormous gains. The appeal of von Bethmann-Hollweg for solidarity against the Socialists had no such effect as did the similar appeal of von Bulow in 1907. The tactfulness and personal hold of the Chancellor was inferior to that of his predecessor, and the ma.s.s of the nation was aroused in 1912 as it was not upon the earlier occasion. The results may be tabulated as follows:

_Seats_ _Seats acquired_ _at dissolution_ _by elections of 1912_

Centre 103 90 Conservatives 58 45 Free Conservatives 25 13 Social Democrats 53 110 National Liberals 51 44 Radicals 49 41 Poles 20 18 Antisemites and Economic Union 20 11 Guelfs or Hanoverians 1 5 Alsatians, Danes, and Independents 16 20 ___ ___ Total 397 397

Two of the three parties of the Left, i.e., the National Liberals (p. 238) and the Radicals, suffered substantial losses, but the victory of the Social Democrats was so sweeping that there accrued to the Left as a whole a net gain of forty-two seats.[347] On the other hand, the three parties of the _bloc_ lost heavily--in the aggregate thirty-eight seats. The number of popular votes cast for candidates of the _bloc_ was approximately 4,500,000; that for candidates of the Left approximately 7,500,000.[348] In Berlin, five of whose six const.i.tuencies were represented already by Social Democrats, there was a notable attempt on the part of the socialists to carry the "Kaiser district"