o 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 constituency.
The Guelfs, or Hanoverische Rechtspartei, comprise the irreconcilables
among the old Hanoverian nobility 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 rehearse 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, Bismar