The Wanganui Chronicle. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1932. THE GERMAN REICHSTAG MEETS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 205, 31 August 1932, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1932. THE GERMAN REICHSTAG MEETS.

QNCE again the German Reichstag meets and is confronted

with a Government which does not depend for its support on the political parties which are represented in the Chambers. The Government has been selected and imposed upon a Parliament which Can either approve or disapprove of Ministerial action. The position now is as it was when the Kaiser ruled. Sueh a situation does not appear to be even logical to the British mind, which has evolved constitutionalism to its highest degree and in most varied forms.

The German people have, however, not long since left behind them the paternalism of the Principalities and Dukedoms which constituted Germany before the creation of the Bund. It was not a difficult matter at all for the administration to function under the Empire without being responsible to the electorate, for this was but a continuance of the old order tinder modern conditions. It was actually the rule of the specialist, or what was taken to be the specialist. The results were of no mean order. The high state of German efficiency in the prewar period can be attributed to the Germanic principle of the dominance over the individual of the State and its rulers. Under such a regime Germany came to prosperity. The form of Government suited the German character, and consequently the small streams which needs must flow if the broad river of Democracy is to run at the full, did not make a contribution. British Parliaments depend upon the lesser institutions to supply them with experience and personnel. A man gets his training on the Road Board, the County Council, in the Trades Union, and the City Council, and in suchlike bodies, before he enters national politics, and public opinion, exercised in electing men to these bodies, becomes politically conscious. Both elector and elected are gradually educated politically. Without these public institutions of small nature and function the politieaL mindedness of the British peoples would not be as strong as it is to-day. Take away that experience and the British people would be in a somewhat similar position to that occupied by the Germans who went into the war. But since the war there has been a decade of Constitutional Government. The mass of men in Germany has seen that it can work, and work with a degree of efficiency which is equal to the efficiency of the Parliaments of other •countries. Had external conditions been more favourable, then the crisis in German economic life would not have fed the mind of the German youth with that spirit of blind partizanship which seems to be the chief ingredient of the Nazi movement. When men can commit murder, and their action be condoned by a large organisation which hopes to guide the destinies of the Republic, the blindness of that organisation does not permit of argument. It is the same mentality in the defeated country which inspired the following in France of General Boulanger after the defeat of 1870 and the loss of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. The German people, who are politically conscious, will naturally resent the clock of constitutionalism being put back by President von Hindenburg and Dr. Papen, while the Nazi movement, motivated more by emotionalism than by reason, has already shown its contempt for Constitutionalism as a method of Government. The clash between Constitutionalism and Naziism, therefore, will not be over the question of saving the Government, for neither cares two straws about its existence, nor its fate.

History will move with a double tempo during the next few days. The world will possibly witness a dramatic scene, but whatever the outcome of that issue, Europe cannot look on as a disinterested spectator. Germany has been brought to its present chaotic condition, by the Treaty of Versailles and the after-results of war propaganda, acting upon a defeated people with an inadequate political experience. The foregoing factors combine to create a situation which is possibly unique in history. The outcome of the situation cannot be foreseen. The world will see what it will see. That is all there is to be said of the situation in Germany at the present moment.