SOCIALISM IN GERMANY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 190, 17 November 1876, Page 14

SOCIALISM IN GERMANY.

The German Socialist Congress came off at Gotha, on the 20th of August, as announced. The object of the Congress was the organisation of the socialist forces for the next election. The socialists in Prussia expect to double the number of their representatives in the Reichstag, and to that end are working energetically. The spread of socialism is beginning to be a source of great disquietude to the Bisraarckian government ; they have sowed the wind and are reaping the whirlwind. The measures which are taken to prevent the spread of the contagion are no longer capable of concealment. And now that the public has discovered their magnitude, public opinion is excited and anxious as to what is coming. The military, in particular, are the special objects of the governmental repressive measures on the one hand and the persistent efforts of the propagandists of socialism on the other, and the latter seem to be the more successful. It has been found necessary to forbid the introduction to military quarters of all newspapers except the military journal, tho ' Militair Wochenblatt.' Public places of amusement frequented by known socialists, and of these places there are in Berlin alone twelve specially named, aTe interdicted to the military. The singing of the Marseillaise is made a very grave offence. But not all the measures of the government can crush out the movement, not even the choice regiment of Guards has escaped the contagion, as searches made in their barracks have proved. The socialist press boasts of its success -with them, and its circulation amongst them. "We rejoice," says the ' Volksbote,' "to have to report the occurrence of several socialist demonstrations in the army ; these are symptoms that the spirit of socialism will soon predominate there. It is but right that it should be so, for do not the majority of our soldiers belong to the

oppressed and beggared classes ? " The facility with which these wicked doctrines are spread among the military is easily explained. Generally of the working and mechanic classes, the soldiers are torn from their families who are very often dependent upon them for support, and are thus left in a state of poverty which ia a continual source of grief to the soldier. Subject to an iron discipline, bad treatment and nominal pay, they soon come under the influence of socialist ideas or little by little sink into despondency and suicide. The official statistics of the Prussian array show that during the month of March, 1875, of 177 deaths occurring during that period, 21 were the result of suicide. From the same source we take the information that at Halberstadt, in a garrison of less than. 1,000 men, six suicides occurred during the year 1875. Surely these figures are not the least sad of the aspects of the case.— ' Catholic Review. 5