A GERMAN SESSION AT WEIMAR

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 228, 20 June 1919, Page 7

A GERMAN SESSION AT WEIMAR

GLIMPSE OF GERMANY'S NATIONAL ASSEMBLY A STOLID CONGREGATION In the old days, when Weimar ->vas only tho German H Iratford-on-Avon, the theatre was the centre of local society (writes-Mr. George Young, the "Daily News" special correspondent). The first thing you did on arival was to present yourself and a box of cigars to-tue old gentleman id the box-office and get a seat tor the season from which you could survey, from a respectful distance tho social lights on tho stage and tho serene luminaries in the Grand Ducal box.

But nowadays, when the' stage of tho Weimar Theatre has become the seat of Government, it is us hard to got a ticket for a session of the Assembly as it used to be for the Solamlik of Abdul Hamid. Incidentally, Germany is to-day much more like Turkey than its old, well-fed-up, well-iitted-out self. Dingy soldiers everywhere, dirt, decay, and deprivation ■ everywhere, listlessness and laissez-faire on tne' surface, wi til unrest and 'upheaval below. Even the sleepy backwater of Thuringia has become a whirlpool of revolution, and Weimar is now ringed in ■by a region of revolutionary strikes that threaten it from three sides. Only yesterday a scouting' party of Spartacists was arrested at the station.

But once inside the theatre things are not so different'from tho old time. The young ladies from the pensions can still ''schwarnien" for the debonnairo premier Sckeideinanu or the distingue Brockdorh"Hantaau, or "schauorn" at handsome Kocnen. the saturnine Tribune of Halle, or at Merges, the hunchback tailor of Brunswick. Independents both, aiid personalities, these two. Kocnen appears ).s "Bernard Shaw" in my recent account of the occupation of Halle. Merges,,, a Queed, wUo looks like a Quilp, is greatly feared by the burgers of Brunswick. They lately oxprcrfed their opinion of the rule of his "Bat" or Board in theso lines, pasted to the mounted statue of Duke William of pious and still immortal memory, ob. 1881: , • '.:'."' Good old Bill, if you'll get down, Merges shall give you back your crown, When you'ro on the Board,) of course, We'll put the tailor on your horse. Words Without Wisdom. Unfortunately, though the burgerstand can be stimulated locally into repartee, even into reprisals in burger strikes, it does not get enough opposition in the National Assembly to rou6e its plethoric majority there to any activity or even animation. Personally, I find n We'mar "Pull Session" about us entertaining and enlightening as was Weimar grand opera. A stout-elderly gentleman stands in a sort of pulpit on the stage, and reads steadily and stolidly through a pile of typewritten recitative: The Independents who go in sometimes for bravura and even gag a little sometimes, are now nearly always away on tour in the pre vinces. So the Assembly can continue daily from three to six digesting a pleasantly conservative Constitution and a pleasingly liberal lunch. Por Weimar is an oasis of peace and plenty in <i lund swept by famine and lighting. No doubt it wps good policy in one way to transfer the Constituent Assembly lo Weimar. An Assembly whose vitality is that of an elderly politician after a contested election and whose voice is that of a tired lawyer talking in bis sleep could not make itself heard, still Jess felt, in Berlin to-day. Whether its work !will be worth anything anyway depends on how slow, things move. They could easily move too fast for the pace of the Assembly. But at least as Dr. Preuso said to me of the Constitution—"at will not get in the way of anything better." One thing is certain, that the Assembly rests for its sanction, even for its survival, ou the Government, not the Government on the Assembly. If this Government falls the Assembly can provide no other. Parliamentary government on party lines will have bejn tried, and round wanting. ' Two Pictures. As I sit listening to a deputy in tho Tribune reading- a treatise on Constitutional niceties as to federation and. free-state-rights, I think of the previous afternoon, when I was listening to a street orator in Halle shouting very nasty and unconstitutional tirades about food cud freedom to an armed party of soldiers and workmen about to attack the Government troops. And then, again, I think of an afternoon in tho Weiniar Theatre a quarter of a century ago. A prominent member of the stock company of these days was an old iiorso blind of one eye— who was always led ,on with his bund side''to the footlights. On this occasion ho got turned round, and realised for the first time what a fool they'd made'of him for years—and the rest was. chaos and the curtain. The' Constituent Assembly is discussing tho ! Constitutional future of Germany, but tho fate of Germany is not being decided there. The struggle between revolution and repression cannot be fought out between the stalls aud tho stjgo of the Weimar Theatre, but in the arena of the great towns where the Government speaks with ininenferfer and machineguns, and tho opposition obstruct with barricades. Already the pressure of the goneral strikes lias restored to tho order of the day revolutionary proposals' for socialising property and for sanctioning tho council system that the Constitution makers had ruled out ivs- unprecedented. A coalition can be made progressive and productive; but it takes a niinonwerter to do it.