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Hokitika Guardian, 31 August 1925, Page 2

“Before the war three "rent autocracies overshadowed Europe. In democratic countries the hourgeoise were everywhere in power; the Socialists were merely an opposition party—and often the weakest one. To-day the remaining monarchies, scattered here and there, are either constitutionally limited or else subordinate to military dictatorships which are already staggering, 1 ’ says M. Emile Vandervelde, the Belgian Socialist leader, in the American quarterly, Foreign Affairs. “In almost every country socialism is already either in power, on the verge of power, or else has become the op-

position, the only opposition that ean some day replace the conservative parties that now constitute the governments. Such is the case, for example, in Belgium, in Austria and in Finland, where the Socialists form more than two-fifths of llie parliamentary representatives. We see them, moreover, assuming power in Denmark and Sweden, or sharing it with the agrarians in Czeeho-Slovakia. They were far and away the most numerous party in Italy until Mussolini's coup de’otat. They had the majority m the Russian Constituent Assembly, prior to the Bolshevik dictatorship. In France the hundred Socialist deputies form the most active wing of the Radical-Socialist- majority. In the Knglish elections of last October, they obtained 34 per cent, of the votes. In Germany. despite their loss of ground since the revolution, the Social-Demo-crats have 131 deputies (without counting 45 Comunists) ns against 137 deputies of the centre -parties and the 176 deputies on the right wing. In short throughout Eastern Europe the Social-Democratic Party now constitutes one-third of the electorate. and its accession to power, which in 1014 was, if not chimerical, at least every distant, to-day seems (.-lit:, of the possibihtcs—or, rather, probabilities—of the immediate future.”