rica if we had attempted to suppress Bryan! The result of giving
him free play and a fair hearing, the result of allowing the people to
judge for themselves, has been a prolonged spectacle of political
hari-kiri which has had a wholesome though negative educational
influence. The most accomplished oratorical Pierrot of our day, who
changes his political philosophy as easily as he changes his costume,
has seen one hundred and sixty cities and towns in America turn to
government by commission, and has kept the heraldic donkey always just
out of reach of the political carrots, until the Republican party
itself fairly pushed the donkey into the carrot-field, but even then
with another leader. No autocrat could have done so much.

As early as 1887 Auer, Bebel, and Liebknecht outlined the programme of
the party, and this programme, again revised at Erfurt in 1891, stands
as the expression of their demands. They claim that: "Die
Arbeiterklasse kann ihre oekonomischen Kaempfe nicht fuehren und ihre
oekonomische Organisation nicht entwickeln ohne politisehe Rechte."
Roughly they demand: the right to form unions and to hold public
meetings; separation of church and state; education free and secular,
and the feeding of school-children; state expenditure to be met
exclusively by taxes on incomes, property, and inheritance; people to
decide on peace and war; direct system of voting, one adult one vote;
citizen army for defence; referendum; international court of
arbitration. Their leader in the Reichstag to-day is Bebel, and from
what I have heard of the debates in that assembly I should judge that
they have not only a majority over any other party in numbers, but
also in speaking ability. The members of the Socialist party always
leave the house in a body, at the end of each session, just before the
cheers are called for, for the Emperor. They have become more and more
daring of late in their outspoken criticism of both the Emperor and
his ministers. In consequence, they are replied to with
ever-increasing dislike and bitterness by their opponents. At a recent
banquet of old university students in Berlin, Freiherr von Zedlitz,
presiding, quoted Barth and Richter: "The victory of Social Democracy
means the destruction of German civilization, and a Social Democratic
state would be nothing more than a gigantic house of correction."

In addition to the four important political divisions in the
Reichstag, the Conservative, Liberal, Cle