eimung pst. SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 1913. AUGUST BEBEL

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 53, 30 August 1913, Page 4

eimung pst. SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 1913. AUGUST BEBEL

The death of August Bebel, of which the cable lately brought us word, has removed one who had played a great part in German politics for more than forty years. Old age and ill-health had enforced his retirement from the political arena some years ago, but his work and influence survived his retirement, and will assuredly not be extinguished by his death. The Social Democratic Party, which i« already the largest of th« political parties of Germany, and is steadily growing in power, is very largely hia work. It was actually founded while he was undergoing a two-yeare' term of imprisonment to which he had been condemned in 1872 for lese-majeste, but he threw himself with the utmost energy into the organisation of the party after his release, and his was the Strongest of the personal influences that developed it to the extraordinary degree of power which it has now attained. Courage, faithj enthusiasm, a remarkable talent for organisation, and a rare command of both written and spoken eloquence were the chief features of the equipment which Bebel brought to the aervioe of the cause. In the early days of the Socialist campaign in Germany at least as much courage was often required of its leaders as of the soldiers who fought the battles of the Fatherland. Bebel was a man who never shrank from taking his stand for what he believed to be right with two or three. Sometime* he stood like a rock against the full tide of a fierce public sentiment, without so much as a quorum of this size to back him. • In 1870 even the followers of Lassalle supported the subsidy required to finance the war with France, but Bebel voted against it with only one other member of the Reichstag to back him. His comrade in that division was Liebknecht, to whose influence hig conversion to Socialism was due. The two men faced side by side the obloquy and the violence to which their unflinching opposition to tho war exposed them, but in 1871 Bebel wae the only Socialist returned to the Reichstag, and there, without a single supporter, he denounced the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine land declared his full sympathy with the Commune of Paris. In the following year Bebel's Parliamentary work was interrupted by the term of imprisonment to which we have referred, and here again his companion was Liebknecht, who received the same punishment for the same offence. It was Bebel's speech, on. Alsac*-Lor-raine and the Paris Commune that first turned Bismarck's attention to the .need for crushing the Socialists, and he undertook the work with the thoroughness that was characteristic of him. In 1871 the Social Democratic vote was 124,700; in 1874 it had risen to 342,000 ; and in 1877 to 493,300. Bismarck had not been, idle during all these years, but it was not till 1878 that he struck h*rd. Having inflamed popular passion Against the Social Democrats by associating them most unjustly with two attempts on the 1 lite of the Emperor, he suddenly dissolved the Reichstag, and the result was the reduction of the Social Democratic vote to 424,000— the first check that the party had received. The previous Reichstag had rejected his Bill for the suppression of the obnoxious party, but the new one elected under the conditions described turned to the work as its most urgent duty. The Socialist Law of 1878 was accordingly passed during its first session, and thereupon » genuine reign of terror set in for the Socialists. Within eight months 222 working men's associations were dissolved and 127 periodical publications suppressed; and- Socialists were imprisoned, exiled, or ruined wholesale. The staggering effect of this ruthlesa policy upon the Social Democrats was shown by the reduction of their vote at the General Election to 312,000— a decrease of 181,000 since 1877. From •that time Onward, however, their progress has been uniform and rapid, tn 1884 they polled 550,000- votes; in 1893, 1,787,000 votes; and in 1907, 3,250,000 votes. At the General Election held at the beginning of last year a further increase of' nearly a million brought the Social Democratic vote up to 4,250)000, out of an aggregate vote of 12,198,000. That with a voting strength representing considerably more than one-third of the national total th© patty has only 110 seats in the Reichstag, out of a total of 397 members, is due to the preference enjoyed by the country districts under an antiquated electoral law, which has allowed of no redistribution since the beginning of the great industrial revolution which has changed the face of Germany. BebePs position, in the Social' Democratic Party was that of a champion of Marxian orthodoxy. H« stood for the extreme Socialist ideal, but with Parliamentary action as the method, and he had to face attacks upon this policy from both sides. Volmar and his followers desired' to drop, or at least to shelve, the extreme demands of the party and to convert it into a Radical Party with an , immediately practicable programme of social reform. On the other hand, the " young Socialists " have pressed for the abandonment of Parliamentary tactics in favour of direct action on Syndicalist lines. Bebel fought both these heresies with great power and conspicuous success. The "young Socialists" made their most formidable attack in 1890-1, out the party repelled it and followed Bsbei's counsel. "We are not in a position," he said, "to set up the sovereignty Of the working .cksa-pn, ihcufeoeia of economic jg>sLesx<

we must resort to the opposite meftfle. In the first instance, we must gain th© political power and utilise thi« in order to attain the economic power by means of the expropriation of the propertied classes. When once political power i» m our hands the rest will follow ft© a matter of course." Bebel'e plea for legislation aa opposed to direct action eeems unanswerable, but the retention of the full revolutionary ideal prevents the Social Democratic group in the Reichstag from co-operation with Any other group, and the result i» an isolation which leaves it comparatively little direct power fts a Parliamentary force. At the same time it secures at the polls a large measure of support from those who, though not Socialists themselves, see no bettor way of striking at the autocracy of the Government. The views of the Government with regard to the Social Democrats remain unchanged, though the Bismatckian persecution is a thing of the past, *nd the freedom of censure which was once customary even in the highest quarters seems to have dropped out. of fashion. " A band of fellows not worthy to beat the name of Germans," wae the Kaiser'e description in 1895 of the party which had polled nearly two million votes at the previous General Election. " Enemies to the divine order of things, without a fatherland," was another compliment that he paid them about the same time. Bub the party gro»B steadily in power, and the Bismarckian policy of reform has proved w powerless as his coercive measures to .give it a permanent check.