HERR EBERT

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 134, 3 December 1918, Page 6

HERR EBERT

THE NEW CHANCELLOR.

The new German Chancellor is of the people, his father, Karl Ebert, being well known as a Heidelberg master tailor. He was born at Heidelberg on 4th November, 1871. Therefore he is a Bad-ener and a fellow countryman of Prince Max (heir to the. Baden crown) and the Imperial Regent, who Appointed him to the high post vacated by himself. After having received his elementary education at one of the Heidelberg State schools, Friedrich Ebert was apprenticed to a Heidelberg saddler. The smell of leather was apparently distasteful to the future Chancellor. He preferred the scent of printing ink, for in 1892 lie migrated to Bremen, and wag editing the Bremer Buergerzeitung, of Socialistic tendencies. The Socialist leaders are, or have been, journalists'who quickly became editors, the more enterprising found their own journals. After eight years of editing, Herr Ebert became the secretary of the Workers' Association of Bremen.

By the end of 1905 Herr Ebert had be. come a member of the committee of the Younger Workers' Section of the German Socialist Party. From 1900 to 1906 he was an influential member of the Bremen Citizens' Association, and the reward of his devotion to the Socialist cause was his election to the Reichstag in 1912. Next year he became a member of the committee of the German Social Democratic Party. Since the war he has never opposed the Government in tha violent way some of his more extreme fellow-Socialists h*ve done. Yet he is undoubtedly a forward Socialist and a "stalwart," who is prepared to suffer for his opinions. The difference between a man like Ebert and one like Liebknecht is that Ebert is a man of affairs while Liebkneoht can see only his side of the case. Herr Ebert can hardly be accused of being an opportunist, but he never fails to take full advantage of every opportunity to advance his cause ani his influence in his party, always with an air of reasonableness which gains him friends, while his opponents are made to feel that he is thoroughly in earnest. ' There is no doubt that the new Chancellor is » very abfe man. and that he has an instinct for affairs. He has made his personality deeply felt among his fellow Socialists; now he ha« the opportunity of serving not only his party but the State. He has already shown himself to be a remarkable man; he may prove a great statesman. As he rose in influence. H"<Ebert showed no swollen head. He d* not buy a.showy house, but continued to live in a modest way in the Triptow quarter of Berlin, a north-eastern suburb of the capital.