days.

Many people in England and the United States of America, I find, do
not at all understand the meaninglessness of German Parliamentary
proceedings. When they read about "stormy sittings" of the
Reichstag and "bitter criticism" of the Chancellor, they judge such
things as they judge similar events in the House of Commons or the
American House of Representatives. Nothing could be more
inaccurate. Governments do not fall in Germany in consequence of
adverse Reichstag votes, as they do in England. They are not the
peopled Governments, but merely the Kaisers creatures. They rise
and fall by his grace alone.

Even this state of affairs needs to be qualified and explained to
the citizens of free countries. The Government is not a Cabinet or
a Ministry.

_The German Government is a one-man affair. It consists of the
Imperial Chancellor_. He, and nobody else, is the "Government,"
subject only to the All-Highest will of the Emperor, whose bidding
the Chancellor is required to do.

The Chancellor, in the name of the "Government," brings in Bills to
be passed by the Reichstag. If the Reichstag does not like a Bill,
which sometimes happens, it refuses to give it a majority. But the
"Government" does not fall. It can simply, as it has done on
numerous occasions, dissolve the Reichstag, order a General
Election, _and keep on doing so indefinitely_, until it gets
exactly the kind of "Parliament" it wants. Thus, though the
Reichstag votes on financial matters, it can be made to vote as the
"Government" wishes.

As I have said, the Reichstag was invented to be, and has always
served the purpose hitherto of, a forum in which discontented
Germany could blow off steam, but achieve little in the way of
remedy or reform. _But during the war the Reichstag has even
ceased to be a place where free speech is tolerated_. It has been
gagged as effectually as the German Press. I was an eyewitness of
one of the most drastic muzzling episodes which has occurred in the
Reichstag during the war--or probably in the history of any modern
Parliament--the suppression of Dr. Karl Liebknecht, member for
Potsdam, during the debate on military affairs on January 17, 1916.
That event will be of historic importance in establishing how
public opinion in Germany during the war has been ruthlessly
trampled under foot.

The Reichstag has practically nothing to do with the conduct of the
war.

Up, practically, to the beginning of 1916