as a liberty-loving people which sets reason and right above authority. A decisive argument which they adduce is that Luther was a German and the Reformation a German work, as if it were not well known, even by schoolboys, that, without the support of the Princes who backed up Luther, the Reformation in Germany would have been nipped in the bud, no matter how right its cause were, and how corrupt the Roman Church.

Such a national character could not fail to show itself in the most trying moments of Germany's history in 1914. But the tameness of the Germans, even of those belonging to a party which, like the Social Democracy, was essentially one of opposition, is described by Fabra Ribas in relating his personal experiences in Berlin, seven years before that date. It was in February 1907, just after the general elections to the Reichstag. The Socialists expected a great victory. Bebel had predicted it to Fabra Ribas in a statement published by 'El Socialista' in Madrid. But, in spite of the fact that they cast a larger number of votes than in the previous election, the party lost 41 seats out of the 81 it previously held. It is true that they were unlawfully lost, by corrupt and fraudulent means. Only in Berlin, where the Socialists, as usual, won five of the six seats representing the capital, were they really successful. When the news from the provinces began to arrive, and when the Socialists learned their defeat, they were astounded. The supporters of the Government, on the other hand, were proportionately elated. Suddenly, spontaneously, a Nationalist demonstration was organised by some ten or twelve thousand persons who paraded the streets shouting 'Death to the Social-democrats,' and 'Long live the Kaiser and Germany.' It was dark already, and the demonstrators marched up the Wilhelmstrasse, passed with a triumphant air through Unter den Linden and presented themselves before the imperial palace, asking the Kaiser to deliver a speech. William II and the Empress stood at a balcony, and the Kaiser, very willing to comply with his people's wishes and display his oratorial faculties, thundered out: Silentium! The twelve thousand persons instantly obeyed, and not a whisper was heard while His Imperial Majesty congratulated them on their victory. He ended by quoting Kleist's verses which say that, under

whatever rule our enemy is defeated, once his banners lie at our feet, that rule is the highest. A more shameless acknowledgment of the illegitimate processes by which the Socialists had been defeated, could not be asked.

Fabra Ribas, after remarking that Spaniards would have indignantly and fiercely protested against such outrages, declares that he was expecting to see, at any moment, the hundreds of thousands of Berlin Socialiststhe Arbeiterbataillonen, as Lassalle called them-come out into the streets and massacre the provoking Nationalists, who were cheering the Kaiser. But nothing of the sort happened. Crestfallen and downhearted, the Socialists remained in their retreats, in the Bier- and Weinstuben, sadly commenting on their disaster. 'Never

in my life,' the Spaniard says, 'had I suffered such a humiliation.' Next morning he frankly told his friends the impression made on him by the night's events. He assured them that at Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia or Bilbao the Socialists would not have swallowed such insults, or left unpunished such gross injustice. But they answered that it was useless to spend energy in futile struggles, and that the party was keeping its strength for the day of the decisive battle.' Fabra Ribas admired their wisdom, and believed in their threat. The day of the decisive battle arrived.

'The European war came (he says); the German Kaiserists wished to make of Europe an immense slaughter-house; and the German Socialist party, which had never wasted its energies in a revolutionary attempt, which had never committed any act of force, bowed to William II and said to him: "Lord, thy will be done!"'

Fabra Ribas observes that this has been the result of the Kaiser's iron rule, a rule which prevails everywhere within his empire, in the schools, in the barracks, in the homes. After reading this book one is forced to conclude that the Germans are born slaves, educated for slavery and content with their lot. How, then, does the Spanish author expect that some day, and by the Germans' own efforts, if not a Social republic, a democracy or a Liberal régime, at least, should be established there? Such an expectation does not correspond with the premises he sets forth. It is the same hope, vainly entertained by

Heine, in contradiction also with his own statements about his countrymen's political subjection. Heine died in the delusions of the Young Germany, of the New Germany, which, according to him and a few other dreamers, was ready to rise up at any moment, and strike a deadly blow at her tyrants. It was a dream, indeed. Spain had her revolution in 1866, has now a constitutional monarchy, and enjoys a Liberal administration. Russia has lately proved to the world that her sons are capable of uniting their efforts to defend their rights. But Germany has never revolted, and seems, on the contrary, proud of the barbarity of her rulers. Having played so great a rôle in the 18th and early 19th centuries in nearly all the highest spheres of the human intellect, she stopped there, and presents in the 20th the melancholy spectacle of a nation enjoying a wonderful material development, but living, politically and socially, in the darkness and ignorance of four hundred years ago. Her salvation is not to be expected, therefore, from within, but from without. If it ever comes, it will come as a consequence of the war, as one of the blessings to the human race from the utter defeat of 'Kaiserism' by the freer nations against whose life William II and his accomplices have conspired. When Kaiserism' is crushed, then the Young Germany, the New Germany, will become a reality, and will love her conquerors, for Germany, like the Brünhild of her old epic poem-'the Amazon-Queen of Isenstein'-is fighting against her saviours, and needs, for her own happiness, to be vanquished by them.

JOSÉ DE ARMAS.

Art. 10.-SOME ELEMENTS OF THE RUSSIAN REVO

LUTION.

ONE of the most dangerous features of contemporary thought is the neurasthenic impulsiveness which makes it a prey to changing moods and suggestions. 'Yellow Press' methods have never reached such a pitch of hypnotic power as in the days of Kaiser Wilhelm and of his journalistic compeers. As regards Russia, such methods have been especially harmful; there was a time -not very long ago-when it was deemed necessary to humour Russian autocracy as the creed, the 'Islam' of the Russian people. We witness now a kind of stampede in the direction of general disappointment and distrust. Fortunately this sway of melodramatic impressionism has its limits; a time comes when the call for trustworthy information and conscientious reflexion asserts itself with invincible force. And the best means to do justice to this claim is to attend not only to occasional snapshots, but to the historical setting of events.

The pyramid of Russian society, though shaken in its very foundations by the catastrophe of March, can certainly not be overturned or dissolved by them. Three of its social layers seem to be especially worthy of attention the bureaucratic civil service, the intellectuals, and the peasantry. These three groups do not constitute the whole of the Russian nation, and a more complete survey would have to give an account of other classes-for example, of the clergy and of the town workmen. But, as want of space does not allow me to discuss the subject from all possible points of view, I will not treat of the established church, the members of which before the Revolution were closely connected with the official class. Nor can I speak of the town proletariat, though it is very much to the fore just at present; it is led by the intellectuals and dependent on the eventual support of the overwhelming peasant majority of the population.

Russian bureaucracy is not a product of chance; it owes its existence and its traditions of military discipline to the fact that it was founded by the Tsars of Moscow, as French bureaucracy was formed by Kings, to gather

and consolidate a nation during centuries of a desperate struggle for existence. As a great historian has expressed it, there was a commander in Moscow, there were officers, there were soldiers, but there were no citizens. What was the salvation of Russia grew to be a yoke; and, when the Germans came in after Peter the Great, the State assumed the aspect of a country under foreign domination. I will not repeat familiar tales of corruption and oppression, but one point has to be emphasised. The most terrible curse of this system was the necessity of periodical and savage 'repressions'-the cutting-down of unruly idealists, who under a healthier rule might have developed into excellent workers. The ever-recurring University riots, for instance, were not essentially the outcome of insane ambition on the part of the students; they were abnormal forms of protest and opposition, against which authority asserted itself by 'sending down' and sometimes exiling thousands of youths on whom the affection of their parents and the hopes of the country had been centred. In a sense the system may be said to have been supported by a careful elimination of the fittest.

Nevertheless this cruel and arbitrary bureaucracy was neither confident nor solid. Air and light could not be kept out of the Empire of the Tsars; and its civil servants were curiously divided in their views and sympathies, yielding sometimes to one and sometimes to another motive in their actions. One of the chief occupations of clever bureaucrats was to criticise and to oppose each other. Von Plehve and Witte were considered in their time intellectual giants and towers of strength in the service of autocratic bureaucracy. Is it not odd that they should have constantly contradicted and counteracted one another? To take one case out of many-in 1903 Witte, then Minister of Finance, became alarmed at the threatening aspects of an economic situation in which the welfare of the people was undermined by exorbitant fiscal claims. At his suggestion an Imperial commission was instituted, to enquire into the condition of agriculture and the needs of the rural classes. The cooperation of Zemstvo elements was sought, and the representatives of the self-governing institutions were invited to express opinions fearlessly and freely. When,