GERMAN PARLIAMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1718, 29 May 1917, Page 2

GERMAN PARLIAMENTS.

DISUCSSING the German system of government in an article in the Contemporary Review, Mr W. H. Dawson says; “The Diets appear to resemble the Parliaments of democratic countries, but the. resemblance is only in external things. They have no voice whatever in the appointment and removal of the Ministers, who are not even required to be members of the legislature.

For practical purposes German Ministers of State are simply the highest of permanent officials in the most exclusive, undemocratic', and domineering bureaucracies in the world. The Diets co-operate with the Government in legislation on equal terms, but the effect is that no.measure can pass and no resolution have effect unless the sovereign is pleased to give his personal assent. It falls* to the executives alone to direct policy, both home and foreign, in accordance with the will of the Crown. A leading German statesman not long ago described the national Diets as so many debating societies, which have an unlimited right to talk, but can do little or no practical, independent work. If irreconcilable conflicts occur between Government and Parliament, it is the Parliament that has to go; the Government remains. There is a dissolution and a general election, and the whole machinery of the bureaucracy is set in motion in the endeavours to secure the return of a more tractable legislature.”