CHAPTER XVI.

The National Assembly.

In preparation for the National Assembly, the various existing political parties effected generally a sweeping reorganization, which included, for the most part, changes of designations as well. The Conservatives and Free Conservatives coalesced as The German National People's Party (_Deutsch-nationale Volkspartei_). The right wing of the National-Liberals, under the leadership of Dr. Stresemann, became the German People's Party (_Deutsche Volkspartei_). The left wing of the old party, under the leadership of Baron von Richthofen joined with the former Progressives (_Fortschrittliche Volkspartei_) to form the German Democratic Party (_Deutsch-demokratische Partei_). The Clericals retained their party solidarity but christened themselves German Christian Party (_Deutsch-Christliche Partei_). The Majority and Independent Socialists retained their old organizations and party designations. The Spartacans, as outspoken enemies of any national assembly, could not consistently have anything to do with it and placed no ticket in the field. Most of the Independent Socialists were also opponents of a constituent assembly, but the party organization was still trying to blow both hot and cold and had not yet gone on record officially as favoring a soviet government and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Of the parties as reorganized, the National People's and the People's parties were monarchic. The Christian Party (Clericals) contained many men who believed a limited monarchy to be the best form of government for Germany, but as a whole the party was democratically inclined and out of sympathy with any attempt at that time to restore the monarchy. The two Socialist parties were, of course, advocates of a republic and bitter opponents of monarchs and monarchies.

The Democratic Party came into existence mainly through the efforts of Theodor Wolff, the brilliant editor of the Berlin _Tageblatt_. No other non-Socialist editor realized so early or so completely as Wolff whither the policy of the old government was taking Germany. He had opposed the submarine warfare, condemned the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, attacked the methods and influence of the pan-Germans and constantly advocated drastic democratic reforms. Probably no other _bourgeois_ newspaper had been so often suppressed as the _Tageblatt_, and it shared with Socialist organs the distinction of being prohibited in many army units and in some military departments at home. Although Wolff held no political office, his influence in the Progressive Party and with the left wing of the National-Liberals was great, and even many Socialists regularly read his leading articles, which were more often cabled to America than were the editorials of any other German publicist, not excepting even the _poseur_ Maximilian Harden-Witkowski.

The revolution was hardly an accomplished fact before Wolff saw the necessity for a democratic, non-Socialist political party which must be free of elements compromised in any manner by participation in the old government or by support of its militaristic and imperialistic policies. He took it upon himself to issue the summons for the formation of such a party. The response was immediate and gratifying. Help came even from unexpected quarters. Prince Lichnowsky, former Ambassador to Great Britain; Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, who had succeeded Dr. Solf as Foreign Minister; Baron von Richthofen of the National-Liberals, Count Johannes Bernstorff, former Ambassador to the United States, and many other prominent members of the higher German nobility[62] joined with _bourgeois_ political leaders to organize the new party. Not all compromised elements could be kept out of the party, but they were excluded from any active participation in the conduct of its affairs or the shaping of its policies.

[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, Footnote: 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. Aeroplanes 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 aeroplanes. 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 Wuerttemberg. 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.

Democracy had an overwhelming majority in the assembly. The Majority Socialists and Democrats together had a clear joint majority of 27 votes, and the Clericals' strength included many democratic delegates. No fewer than eight of the party's delegates were secretaries of labor unions. Thirty-four women, the greatest number ever chosen to any country's parliament, were elected as delegates. The Majority Socialists, the original advocates of woman's suffrage in Germany, fittingly elected the greatest number of these--15; the Clericals were next with 7, the Democrats elected 5, the Conservatives 4, and the Independent Socialists 3.

The government announced that the National Assembly would be held in Weimar on February 6th. Hardly a fortnight had passed since the first "Bolshevik week," and the cabinet feared disorders, if nothing worse, if an attempt were made to hold the assembly in Berlin. It was also easier to afford adequate protection in a city of thirty-five thousand than in the capital. Although it was never declared in so many words, it is probable that a sentimental reason also played a part in the choice. There was no taint of Prussianism about Weimar. As the "intellectual capital of Germany" it has an aura possessed by no other German city. Goethe, Schiller and Herder spent the greater part of their lives in this little Thuringian city and are buried there. It has given shelter to many other men whose names are revered by educated people the world over. It is reminiscent of days when militarism and imperialism had not yet corrupted a "people of thinkers and dreamers," of days when culture had not yet given way to _Kultur_, of days before a simple, industrious people had been converted to a belief in their mission to impose the ideals of _Preussen-Deutschland_ upon the world with "the mailed fist" and "in shining armor." It is characteristic that men in high places believed--and they undoubtedly did believe--that a recollection of these things could in some way redound to the benefit of Germany.

The days between the elections and the convening of the National Assembly brought further serious complications in Germany's domestic situation. Disaffection among the soldiers was increased by an order of Colonel Reinhardt, the new Minister of War, defining the respective powers of officers' and the soldiers' councils. The order declared that the power of command remained with the officers in all matters affecting tactics and strategy. The councils' functions were confined to matters of provisioning and to disciplinary punishments. This order, although in accordance with the original decree of the cabinet regarding the matter, failed to satisfy men who had become contemptuous of all authority except their own.

The Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils of the whole country were also disquieted by the announcement of the government that, with the convening of the National Assembly, all political power would pass to the assembly, and revolutionary government organs everywhere and of all kinds would cease to exist. This was not at all to the taste of most of the members of the Soviets, who were affected less by political considerations than by the prospect of losing profitable sinecures and being compelled to earn a living by honest effort. The combined Soviets of Greater Berlin voted, 492 to 362, to demand the retention of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils in any future state-form which might be adopted. Other Soviets followed the example, and there was talk of holding a rival congress in Berlin contemporaneously with the sessions of the National Assembly in Weimar. The Spartacans, already beginning to recover from their defeats of a few days earlier, began planning another _coup_ for the first week of February.

Noske's troops were kept constantly in action. The Bolsheviki in Wilhelmshaven staged an armed uprising, but it was quickly put down. They seized power in Bremen, defied the government to cast them out, and several regiments were required to defeat and disarm them. There was rioting in Magdeburg, and also in Duesseldorf. Polish aggressions, particularly between Thorn and Graudenz, continued. It was difficult to move troops against them because of the opposition of the Independents and Spartacans, and a great part of the soldiers, arrived at the front, refused to remain and could not be detained, since, under Socialist methods, they had the right to quit at any time on giving a week's notice. Serious strikes further embarrassed and handicapped the government.

The determination and energy displayed by the cabinet in these difficult days deserve generous acknowledgment, and especially so in view of the fact that it required a high degree of moral courage for any body of Socialist rulers to brave the denunciations of even well meaning _Genossen_ by relying on armed force to compel respect for their authority and to carry out the mandate given them now by the great majority of the German people. Preparations for the National Assembly were well made. No person was permitted even to buy a railway ticket to Weimar unless he was in possession of a special pass bearing his photograph, and a detachment of picked troops was sent to the city to protect the assembly against interruption. Machine-guns commanded all entrances to the beautiful National Theater which had been converted to the purposes of the assembly, and a special detail of experienced Berlin policemen and plain-clothes detectives was on hand to assist the soldiers.

The local garrisons of Weimar, Eisenach, Gotha and other nearby places made a futile attempt to prevent the sending of troops from Berlin, but never got farther than the beginning. Their attitude was not due to any political considerations, but was dictated by selfishness and wounded pride: they insisted that the sending of outside troops was an insult to them, since they could furnish all the troops necessary to preserve order, and they also felt that they were entitled to the extra pay and rations dealt out to Noske's men.

The National Assembly convened on February 6th with nearly a full attendance. It was called to order by Ebert, who appealed for unity and attacked the terms of the November armistice and the additional terms imposed at its renewals since. The speech received the approval of all members of the assembly except the Independent Socialists, who even on this first day, started their tactics of obstruction, abuse of all speakers except their own and rowdyish interruptions of the business of the sessions.

On February 7th Dr. Eduard David, a scholarly man who had been for many years one of the Majority Socialists' leaders, was elected president (speaker) of the National Assembly. The other officers chosen came from the Christian, Democratic and Majority Socialist parties, the extreme Right and extreme Left being unrepresented. Organization having been effected, a provisional constitution was adopted establishing the Assembly as a law-giving body. It provided for the election of a National President, to serve until his successor could be elected at a general election, and for the appointment of a Minister-President and various ministers of state. The constitution created a so-called Committee of State, to be named by the various state governments and to occupy the position of a Second Chamber, and empowered the assembly to enact "such national laws as are urgently necessary," particularly revenue and appropriation measures.

Friedrich Ebert was elected Provisional President of the German Republic on February 11th by a vote of 277 out of a total of 379 votes. Hardly a decade earlier the German Emperor had stigmatized all the members of Ebert's party as _vaterlandslose Gesellen_ and as "men unworthy to bear the name of German." Now, less than three months after that monarch had been overthrown, a Socialist was placed at the head of what was left of the German Empire. A young and inconsequential Prussian lieutenant had six years earlier been refused permission to marry the girl of his choice because her mother sold eggs. The new President of the country had been a saddler. He had once even been the owner of a small inn in Hamburg.

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 Mueller; 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. Naive 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.

The tardy realization of this fact placed the delegates of the government party in a serious dilemma. Sweeping socialization had been promised, and the rank and file of the party expected and demanded it. In these circumstances it was obvious that a failure to carry out what was at the same time a party doctrine and a campaign pledge would have serious consequences, and it must be reckoned to the credit of the leaders of the party that they put the material welfare of the state above party considerations and refused to let themselves be hurried into disastrous experiments along untried lines. Their attitude resulted in driving many of the members of the Socialist party into the ranks of the Independents, but in view of the fact that the government nevertheless remained strong enough to defeat these elements wherever they had recourse to violence, and of the further fact that to accede to the demands of these intransigeants would have given the final blow to what little remained of German industry, the leaders must be said to have acted wisely and patriotically.

With organization effected, the National Assembly settled down to work. But it was work as all similar German organizations in history had always understood it. All the political immaturity, the tendency to philosophical and abstract reasoning, the ineradicable devotion to the merely academic and the disregard of practical questions that are such prominent characteristics of the people were exhibited just as they had been at the Congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main seventy years earlier. It has been written of that Congress:

"But the Germans had had no experience of free political life. Nearly every deputy had his own theory of the course which ought to be pursued, and felt sure that the country would go to ruin if it were not adopted. Learned professors and talkative journalists insisted on delivering interminable speeches and on examining in the light of ultimate philosophical principles every proposal laid before the assembly. Thus precious time was lost, violent antagonisms were called forth, the patience of the nation was exhausted, and the reactionary forces were able to gather strength for once more asserting themselves."[64]

[64] _Encyclopedia Britannica_, title "Germany."

Except that the reactionary forces were too weakly represented at Weimar to make them an actual source of danger this characterization of the Frankfort Congress might have been written about the proceedings of the National Assembly of February. It is a significant and illuminating fact that the greatest animation exhibited at any time during the first week of the assembly was aroused by a difference of meaning as to the definition of a word. Professor Hugo Preuss, Prussian Minister of the Interior, to whom had been entrusted the task of drafting a proposed constitution for the new republic, referred in a speech elucidating it, to "an absolute majority."

"Does 'absolute majority' mean a majority of the whole number of delegates?" asked some learned delegate.

The other delegates were galvanized instantly into the tensest interest. Here was a question worth while! What does "absolute majority" mean? An animated debate followed and was listened to with a breathless interest which the most weighty financial or economic questions had never succeeded in evoking.

And while the National Assembly droned thus wearily on, clouds were again gathering over Berlin and other cities in the troubled young republic.