THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1907 SOCIAL UNREST IN GERMANY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8327, 9 January 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1907 SOCIAL UNREST IN GERMANY.

Socialism has grown hc\n'ti in hand in Germany with the growth of national wealth, says the London Times, and it has gvoWil iiVost in those regions where the advance in general prosperity Ms been most remarkable. The explftnaticm of the fact is simple enough» The immense increase' in the riches of modern Germany is j due to the transformation of a State which was mainly agricultural a generation ago into a State which has become mainly commercial and manufacturing, and which year by year becomes more commercial arid manufacturing. The nfew population of the manufacturing centres have quite different views of their own •rights and duties to'thtfss'which their fathers held who dwelt upon the land. They can be indoctrinated and they can be organised. They are highly >'educated; they read, and they discuss together what they read. Compulsory military service enrols them at the age'most susceptible to new impressions in the army, and amongst 'their comrades they find active, eager, and skilful preachers of the most "advanced" political and social creeds. Even the peasants, who return to the land, do not altogether escape this contact with new ideas, though, of course, they are more likely to shake off its results after they leave the ranks than their comrades who return to the factory or the mine. That man cannot live by bread alone is a truth in politics as in higher matters, once he has emerged from the most primitive conditions. The highly educated and highly organised pi'oletariat of the German cities resent the political impotence to which they are condemned, and compare it with the influence and power which their class exercises in other and neighbouring lands. And this feeling is not confined to the proletariat alone. In the German Em-

pire, and especially in Prussia, the first State of the Empire, the great bulk of the population is practically shut out from political power." Bismarck himself described the Prussian franchise as the worst in the world, and though the.franchise for the Imperial Parliament, as distinguished from the Prussian Parliament, is wide enough, it no longer secures a just numerical representation of parties, while the members whom it returns find themselves without real control of the affairs of the nation. . . . The German people think that they have a right to a larger share in the management of their own affairs —to a share approximating at least to that enjoyed by the other peoples of West Europe. Their aspirations in this respect cannot but seem reasonable, and just in English eyes. Yet Englishmen who know anything ofmust also i.many _v,el that the difficulties in the way of satisfying those aspirations are immense. The country, as Prince Bulow said the other day, is not homogeneous, and unfortunately it is divided in a way which makes a decisive step particularly difficult. On the one side stand the classes who produce the wealth without which a Weltpolitik is impractiC" able. On the other stands the "small and, reactionary" class, as Herr von Vollmar styles them, who are the stoutest and most trusted upholders of the Prussian throne. Their views are irreconcilable, and it is hard to choose between them.