its own accord. The men who would have seized th more easily appropriated fruits of victory, if German had been triumphant in the war, were not candidate for the unpleasing duties of making peace with a vi torious foe, and thereafter presiding over the sordid tas of making ends meet with means that were manifestl inadequate. To a large extent, therefore, the Germa people were of one mind; and, although the plan c popularising the Government, which commended itsel to everybody, could be carried out in an indefinite numbe of ways, the differences would in this strange access c unanimity present themselves to the minds of member of the Assembly as matters of detail to be discussed i the conciliatory spirit in which co-workers endeavou to arrive at an agreement, and not in the obstructive spirit in which debate is employed by antagonists t wreck hostile proposals.

Not only was the way cleared of moral obstacles fo the National Assembly; it was also made plain by th relegation to other authorities of some of the more troublesome questions to which the drawing-up of constitution gives rise. The transitory provisions with which the document is concerned in its concluding articles are eloquent upon this point. Thus, the groupinş of the German people into states or provinces is a matter which is left over for the decision of the Reichstag, to be effected hereafter by a system of local option, if tha should prove practicable, or, if not, then by resolutions which are to be in the nature of amendments to the constitution. How extremely contentious a subject is here adjourned for more leisurely consideration may be realised by merely considering the overgrown condition of Prussia as we know it to-day. By various annexations, mostly ill-assimilated, Prussia had grown before the war to be the largest state in Germany, including a territory of 134,000 square miles and a population of between forty and fifty millions. Even in the reduced Germany of to-day it figures as a self-contained state of 40,000,000 inhabitants in a republic of 70,000,000.

It need hardly be said that the smaller States regard this predominance with jealousy, not to say with misgiving. Prussia was tolerated so long as Prussian policy and Prussian administration led to victories and

prosperity. But to-day, when the leadership of that State has conducted the whole German Commonwealth into a morass, there is á strong current of opinion which cries out against the headship of Prussia; and there will doubtless be, within the newly acquired provinces of Prussia itself, an equally strong desire to recover the old independence which was forfeited as the result of Prussia's military successes in war. It was necessary that a question of this sort should be left over for later discussion if the new German constitution was to make a timely appearance; but its existence in an unsettled condition exposes the Constitution itself to the perils of violent disturbance in the course of settlement.

Of similar import, under the present, point of view, are the provisions which leave open to further negotiation and, in the ultimate resort, to the decision of the High Court, the terms upon which the post and telegraph services in Bavaria and Württemberg and the State railways and other means of transport in other parts of Germany are to be surrendered to the administration in Berlin. If these difficult questions had come on for discussion at Weimar, it may well be supposed that the debates would be proceeding at the present moment.

It is not only difficult questions of administration which were withdrawn from the cognisance of the National Assembly. A question equally difficult to resolve, if it were to be resolved on reasoned grounds, is the question how the Parliamentary suffrage should be distributed. Ultimately this is the most important of all questions for the success of Parliamentary government. That, like all other forms of government, can continue only under the condition that it places in the seat of authority those persons who under the conditions of the time possess the power to govern. The representatives of a constituency, however unanimous, which lacks the intellectual faculty to understand the political situation, the moral force to form and express opinion, or the physical power to make its will prevail, will be thrust aside, in the rush of affairs, either by representatives of a more energetic section of Society or by the promoters of mere anarchy, never wanting in times of feeble public control. A thinker desiring to set up a Parliamentary government would carefully consider to Vol. 235.-No. 466.

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whom the responsibility of using the members of the parliament could be safe. ntrusted. He would inquire where the ultimate sources of political power lay, and would take care that the easiest and most direct channel for the conveyance of authority from its sources in the opinion and power of the people to the instruments of government should be by the appointed channel of Parliamentary election. The National Assembly, how ever, did not even entertain this question. Before its members could be elected, an electoral system had to be put in operation; and, if the transition from the old state of Germany to the new had taken a peaceful course, it may be presumed that the pre-existing electoral law would have served the provisional purpose" of election to the National Assembly, and that the distribution of the electoral franchise in regenerated Germany would have been one among the weightiest questions submitted to that Assembly. That, however, did not happen.

Germany since the war has undergone two revolutions. The first, which put an end to the Imperial régime, was brought about by the usurpation of power by self-constituted Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils. They made a bid for establishing in Germany the conditions which have supervened in Russia, but they found! that, as they were dealing with a social organism of a higher type than the Russian autocracy, they did not command the sources of political power and, after a few weeks of confusion, were constrained to make way for the more regular system which the National Assembly introduced. On one point, however, they were able to forestall discussion and to implant their theory in the future German system. Being in a position to superintend the elections for the General Assembly, the Workmen's Council of Berlin resolved that it should be held, not according to established law, but on the principle that every German man and woman of twenty years old and upwards should be entitled to vote. Naturally the representatives of such a constituency considered themselves absolved from discussing the merits of the system under which they had been chosen; and so the fundamental law of Germany is formulated in accordance with the views of the defunct Workmen's Council of the

of

the Prussian capital. Whether it can give to Germany a airparliament composed of members who will be able to and handle affairs of state is, in the circumstances, a matter and of pure chance, and, in any case, it raises a question which only the future can decide. If it should turn out that popular election leaves the effective political forces dunrepresented in the Reichstag, we may expect to see the Reichstag of to-day set aside with as little consideration as was the Reichstag convened by the Emperor when it was opposed by an insurgent populace.

Putting aside these larger questions, the German National Assembly has addressed itself to those branches of constitution-making which relate to the substitution of the new posts and powers of President, new Reichstag, sta Reichsrath, and Judicature, for the Kaiser, subordinate kings, dukes, etc., old Reichstag, Bundesrath, and the old Judicature respectively.

The ante-bellum constitution of Germany was based upon the view that it was built up by the union, in a ericomprehensive federation, of a number of independently Sovereign States. Prior to the Franco-German war of 1870 the union had been a simple confederation of those States the German Bund-having as the organ of its common political life the Bundesrath. Every one of those constituent States had its own constitution comprising, as a rule, a deliberative as well as an executive council co-operating with the monarch in the exercise of sovereign authority. When, in 1870, Bismarck brought about the conversion of the confederated Germany into a federal Empire, he added to the system two organs of sovereignty, a Kaiser who assumed the personal headship of the whole State, and a supreme imperial Court of Law, the Reichsgericht. He also added a deliberative assembly -the Reichstag—for the whole Empire. The Kaiser, as head of the Imperial Executive, was provided with a staff of officers who were independent of the several States and administered those branches of the public business-Foreign Affairs, Imperial taxation, the Naval Service, etc.-which had been placed in the hands of the Sovereign, while the Imperial High Court exercised a general power of appeal which reduced all State Courts to a secondary rank. The military control, vested in the

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ciple

the

Kaiser upon the outbreak of war, was, in time of per divided in a complicated fashion between Empire a constituent States; and religious establishments w under State control, subject to an over-ruling author in Reichstag and Empire.

In order to come to a practical understanding of working of this somewhat complicated system, it is to borne in mind that, throughout the whole history this establishment, Prussia has exercised preponderat authority, an authority so preponderating that no ot State has been in a position even to consider the carry of opposition to Prussian wishes to any great lens The inter-state jealousies and rivalries that have ari have therefore been confined within modest limits, & a system which on paper looks impracticably complica has in fact been found workable.

When the Empire fell, the danger that the elaborat constructed unity from which the German people in brilliant second half of the 19th century had derived much power at home and so great a weight in councils of the world would fall with it, was very obvic The fear of this calamity seems to have been the princi consideration which destroyed the power of the usurp Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils. The various in pendent governments which had replaced the soverei of the German States sent delegates to a central c ference on Nov. 25, 1918, who passed, as the first res of their deliberations, the following resolution:

'The maintenance of the unity of Germany is of capital portance. All the German tribes are resolved upon a Gern Republic. They pledge themselves to work unswervingly unity and to strive against separatist movements.'

In accordance with this view the unity of Germany kept in mind as the object of the first importance the Constituent Assembly; and in that body a pow ful section aimed at eliminating the federal elemer altogether from the constitution and building the ne Germany upon the artificial basis of assumed hom geneity. In that case the Bundesrath would have d appeared altogether, and the new State would ha consisted of Kaiser and Reichstag under new names, State executives being merged in the unified executi

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