n for purposes of defence;
of their attitudes toward a powerful fleet, and toward the Jesuits, it
would require a volume, and a large one, to describe. Though it is
dangerous to characterize them, they may be said without inaccuracy to
represent the democratic movement in Germany both in thought and
political action, and to hold a wavering place between the
Conservatives and the Social Democrats.

The Social Democratic party, the party of the wage-earners only
assumed recognizable outlines after the appeal of Ferdinand Lassalle
for a workingman's congress at Leipsic in 1863. In 1877 they mustered
493,000 voters. Bismarck and the monarchy looked askance at their
growing power. It was attempted to pass a law, punishing with fine and
imprisonment: "wer in einer den oeffentlichen Frieden gefaehrdenden
Weise verschiedene Klassen der Bevoelkerung gegeneinander oeffentlich
aufreizt oder wer in gleicher Weise die Institute der Ehe, der Familie
und des Eigentums oeffentlich durch Rede oder Schrift angreift." This
was a direct attack upon the Socialists, but the Reichstag refused to
pass the law. In May, 1878, and shortly after in June, two attempts
were made upon the life of the Kaiser. Bismarck then easily and
quickly forced through the new law against the Socialists.

Under this law newspapers were suppressed, organizations dissolved,
meetings forbidden, and certain leaders banished. For twelve years the
party was kept under the watchful restraint of the police, and their
propaganda made difficult and in many places impossible. After the
repeal of this law, and for the last twenty years, the party has
increased with surprising rapidity. In 1893 the Social Democrats cast
1,787,000 votes; in 1898, 2,107,000; in 1903, more than 3,000,000; and
in the last election, 1912, 4,238,919; and they have just returned 110
delegates to the Reichstag out of a total of 397 members.

It is noteworthy that in America there is one Socialist member of the
House of Representatives; while in Germany, which combines autocratic
methods of government, with something more nearly approaching state
ownership and control, than any other country in the world, the most
numerous party in the present Reichstag is that of the Social
Democrats.

Freedom is the only medicine for discontent. There is no rope for the
hanging of a demagogue like free speech; no such disastrous gift for
the socialist as freedom of action. Imagine what would have happened
in Ame