GERMAN GENERAL ELECTIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25, 30 January 1912, Page 6

GERMAN GENERAL ELECTIONS.

The final result of the v Beichstag elections is, on paper, remarkably like that of our own General Election. Grouping the various parties under two main headings-, the position in the new Reichstag is as follows :— Government 197, Opposition 200. A similar grouping of New Zealand partie? with reference to the teat question of a vote of non-confidence in the present Government yields a similar result. It is, however, hardly necessary to say that the parallel cannot be carried further than this superficial resemblance.- The German Government will be under 'no obligation to resign office, even if it does find itself in, a minority on % teat ,vote,

and the idea of tho Opposition being called upon to form a Ministry is out of the question. It is not the Reichstag but the Kaiser that determines the fate of Ministries. In theory he is a constitutional monarch, but in Germany, as elsewhere; theory and practice do not always agree. In England the King still has all sorts of theoretical powers which in practice have either become entirely obsolete or been subordinated to th» needs of democracy. In Germany, under the present Kaiser, the process has beten reversed. He is too modest to claim omnipotence, but he does claim to hold his commission direct from Heaven, and he repudiates the right of anybody else to interpret' it for him. No tyrant known to history or to fiction has proclaimed his own irresponsible supremacy in more uncompromising; terms than this constitutional monarch who, in the twentieth century, lords- it over on© of the proudest and most enlightened nations of the world. "Only one is master in the country," the Kaiser has declared. "That am I. Who opposes me I shall crush to pieces." A copy-book could be filled with maxims of this sort for the' edification of tho infant mind in Germany; With a ruler who can talk like this and act like this it would bo the grossest of fallacies to construe the result of a Parliamentary election by the analogy of' 9 free country such as Britain. The idea that any change of policy will be forced, upon the Kaiser and his advisers by the fact that the "Opposition " has a nominal majority in the Reichstag must therefore be dismissed as a sheer illusion. There is indeed no such thing as an Opposition in Germany in our sense of the term. The Reichstag is divided into about a dozen groups, which have, as a rule, an objective distinct from supporting or opposing tho Government. Five of these groups are of considerable size, but it is a remarkable fact that never since 1874 haa the largest group comprised as many as one-third of the seats, nor has more than one group ever at the came time held more than a quarter. For. twenty years the Centre, with a strength ranging from 96 to 106, has been the largest of the groups. Representing as it does the Roman Catholics, the Centre is in general strongly opposed to the Socialists, though it was the combination, of these ' two groups against the Government that induced Bulow to dissolve in 1907. The Centre held its own in, the " khaki " elections that followed, but the Socialists suffered very severely. They had won 81 seats in 1903, but in 1907 the number was reduced to 43. The Socialists have 'now improved upon the high-water mark of 1903 with, a total of 110. The 6econd ballots appear to have worked out rather bettor for them than they expected, and it is noteworthy that their gains, which in the first ballots were mostly at the expense of the National Liberals and Radicals, have now been largely taken from the previously unshaken Centre. With its reduced total of 93, the Centre has now to yield pride of place among the Parliamentary groups to the Socialists. The general success of the Socialists is emphasised by a striking victory for the Red Flag at Potsdam. But though, with tho aid of the Liberal and Radical sections, the Socialists have now an, actual majority in the Beichstag, -no considerable change of polioy ia, for the reasons already given, to be expected. One of the Kaiser's aphorisms is that every Social Democrat is an enemy of the Fatherland. He may indulge this particular strain of patriotism a, little less freely, and hie statesmen may move a little more warily t now that these enemies of the Fatherland have, despite all the obstacles interposed by an obsolete representative system, acquired the supremacy among the Parliamentary groups. But the general lines of German policy will continue as before, and Mr. Keir Hardie cannot yet be allowed to ecrap the British Navy.-