waters, and the Prussian torrent now has the depth and volume of the
whole main-stream of German thought."[2]

[Footnote 1: _e.g._ Russia has a representative government in this sense,
though she is without "representative institutions" in the democratic
sense.]

[Footnote 2: _Round Table_, Sept. 1914, p. 628.]

It may be so; it may be that the Germany of Goethe, Schiller, and Beethoven
has been absorbed by the Germany of Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon; but it
must not be forgotten at the same time that, since their day, yet another
Germany has come into being, the Germany of Marx, Engels, and Bebel, a
Germany which is represented by more than a third of the voters in the
Empire. The old line of cleavage had barely closed up when a new and much
more fundamental schism appeared in the State, that between imperialism and
social democracy. The existence of this tremendous revolutionary force in
Germany, determined to overthrow the militarist _regime_ of Prussia and to
re-establish the State on a democratic basis, is an unanswerable proof
that the government of the Empire is not in any true sense representative.
Prussia has in this direction also impeded the development of the national
idea and given mechanical unity at the expense of spiritual unity. It has
created a vast political party of irreconcilables in the country, men
who have been led to feel that they have neither part nor promise in the
national life, and who therefore elect to stand outside it. "Our Social
Democratic party," writes von Buelow, "lacks a national basis. It will have
nothing to do with German patriotic memories which bear a monarchical
and military character. It is not like the French and Italian parties, a
precipitate of the process of national historical development, but since
its beginning it has been in determined opposition to our past history as a
nation. It has placed itself outside our national life."[1] And again: "In
the German Empire, Prussia is the leading State. The Social Democratic
party is the antithesis of the Prussian state."[2] Nevertheless, the
Imperial Government, not finding it possible to suppress the social
democrats, does its best to employ them for its own ends. It uses them
in fact as it uses irreconcilable France, namely, for the purpose of
terrorisation, since it has discovered that the spectre of socialism is as
effective to keep the middle classes loyal as the spectre of French
revenge is to keep the Southern States lo