SOCIALISTIC SPECTRE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 712, 11 January 1910, Page 6

SOCIALISTIC SPECTRE.

THE NEW, GERMAN CHANCELLOR. Writing from Berlin to a London paper, F. W. 'Wile .remarks:— I The. spectre of Social Democracy, laid by Prince Bilelow's '"patriotic" Eeichstag: campaign' of 1307, is abroad again. in| Germany. 'It has risen.' hydra-headed, in ■ all its > old-time venom and fury,' assertive, impudent, and triumphant : By-elections for the Eeichstag general . elections for State Parliaments, and municipal elections ill towns and.cities are yielding astaggering crop , of, "red" victories. To the Diet of Saxony, which! two months ago contained one , Social Democrat, twenty-five . have just been, returned. "' The Lancashire of Germany has given the signttl for what the nation fears is destined to be an electoral revolution in the guise of a Socialist avalanche. How to avert it lias suddenly become the paramount issue of German politics. :

On November: 30, amid pomp and circumstance, tho Kaiser will open the new legislative ' period of. the Eeichstag. Socialist members, stubbornly, true to .their resolve , never to brush shoulders with the ermine, boycott ■ the royal cere-' monial in the marble-pillared White Hall of the Berlin Schloss. But if not present in the flesh they will this time be uppermost 'in the. thoughts of ' those who are there; fof the opening rites are preceded by divine services—supplication for Providential guidance in' the passage 'of .£20,000,000 Naval Estimates ' without debate and tho other, activities of German-par-liamentary life—and in' Tuesday's prayers will be the unuttered hope, for deliverance from the red peril. To the banishment of that bogey Government and parties have, come,, to realise the necessity of bending all' their efforts.-' ;