Part 13 (2/2)
The craze for subst.i.tutes has spread so extensively that there have been some unpleasant results both for the purchaser and the producer, as was the case with several bakers, who were finally detected and convicted of a liberal use of sawdust in their cakes.
Germany has worked especially hard to find a subst.i.tute for indiarubber, though with only moderate success. I know that the Kaiser's Government is still sending men into contiguous neutral countries to buy up every sc.r.a.p of rubber obtainable. In no other commodity has there been more relentless commandeering. When bicycle tyres were commandeered--the authorities deciding that three marks was the proper price to pay for a new pair of tyres which had cost ten--there was a great deal of complaining.
Nevertheless, without an excellent reason, no German could secure the police pa.s.s necessary to allow him to ride a bicycle. Those who did obtain permission to ride to and, from their work had to select the shortest route, and ”joy-riding” was forbidden.
”Subst.i.tute rubber” heels for boots could be readily obtained until the late summer, but after that only with difficulty. They were practically worthless, as I know from personal experience, and were as hard as leather after one or two days' use.
Despite the rubber shortage, the Lower Saxon Rubber Company, of Hildersheim, does a thriving business in raincoats made from rubber subst.i.tutes. The factory is running almost full blast, all the work being done by women, and the finished product is a tribute to the skill of those in charge.
It is impossible to buy a real tennis hall in the German Empire to-day. A most hopeless makes.h.i.+ft ball has been put on the market, but after a few minutes' play it no longer keeps its shape or resiliency.
Germany has been very successful in the subst.i.tution of a sort of enamelled-iron for aluminium, bra.s.s, and copper. Some of the Rhenish-Westphalian iron industries have made enormous war profits, supplying iron chandeliers, stove doors, pots and pans, and other articles formerly made of bra.s.s to take the place of those commandeered for the purpose of supplying the Army with much-needed metals.
For copper used in electrical and other industries she claims to have devised subst.i.tutes before the war, and her experts now a.s.sert that a two-years' supply of copper and bra.s.s has been gathered from the kitchens and roofs of Germany. The copper quest has a.s.sumed such proportions that the roof of the historic, world-renowned Rathaus at Bremen has been stripped. Nearly half the church bells of Austria have found their way to the great Skoda Works.
Of course Germans never boast of the priceless ornaments they have stolen from Belgium and Northern France. They joyfully claim that every pound of copper made available at home diminishes the amount which they must import from abroad, and pay for with their cherished gold.
The authorities delight in telling the neutral visitors that they have found adequate subst.i.tutes for nickel, chromium, and vanadium for the hardening of steel. If that is really so, why does the _Deutschland's_ cargo consist mainly of these three commodities?
CHAPTER XIV
THE GAGGING OF LIEBKNECHT
Although Bismarck gave the Germans a Const.i.tution and a Parliament after the Franco-Prussian War as a sop for their sacrifices in that campaign, he never intended the Reichstag to be a Parliament in the sense in which the inst.i.tution is understood in Great Britain.
What Bismarck gave the Germans was a debating society and a safety-valve. They needed a place to air their theories and ventilate their grievances. But the Chancellor of Iron was very careful, in drawing up the plans for the ”debating society,” to see that it conferred little more real power on the nation's ”representatives” than is enjoyed by the stump-speakers near Marble Arch in London on Sundays.
Many people in England and the United States of America, I find, do not at all understand the meaninglessness of German Parliamentary proceedings. When they read about ”stormy sittings” of the Reichstag and ”bitter criticism” of the Chancellor, they judge such things as they judge similar events in the House of Commons or the American House of Representatives. Nothing could be more inaccurate. Governments do not fall in Germany in consequence of adverse Reichstag votes, as they do in England. They are not the peopled Governments, but merely the Kaisers creatures. They rise and fall by his grace alone.
Even this state of affairs needs to be qualified and explained to the citizens of free countries. The Government is not a Cabinet or a Ministry.
_The German Government is a one-man affair. It consists of the Imperial Chancellor_. He, and n.o.body else, is the ”Government,”
subject only to the All-Highest will of the Emperor, whose bidding the Chancellor is required to do.
The Chancellor, in the name of the ”Government,” brings in Bills to be pa.s.sed by the Reichstag. If the Reichstag does not like a Bill, which sometimes happens, it refuses to give it a majority. But the ”Government” does not fall. It can simply, as it has done on numerous occasions, dissolve the Reichstag, order a General Election, _and keep on doing so indefinitely_, until it gets exactly the kind of ”Parliament” it wants. Thus, though the Reichstag votes on financial matters, it can be made to vote as the ”Government” wishes.
As I have said, the Reichstag was invented to be, and has always served the purpose hitherto of, a forum in which discontented Germany could blow off steam, but achieve little in the way of remedy or reform. _But during the war the Reichstag has even ceased to be a place where free speech is tolerated_. It has been gagged as effectually as the German Press. I was an eyewitness of one of the most drastic muzzling episodes which has occurred in the Reichstag during the war--or probably in the history of any modern Parliament--the suppression of Dr. Karl Liebknecht, member for Potsdam, during the debate on military affairs on January 17, 1916.
That event will be of historic importance in establis.h.i.+ng how public opinion in Germany during the war has been ruthlessly trampled under foot.
The Reichstag has practically nothing to do with the conduct of the war.
Up, practically, to the beginning of 1916 the sporadic Social Democratic opposition to the war, mainly by Dr. Liebknecht, was ignored by the Government. The war-machine was running so smoothly, and, from the German standpoint, so victoriously, that the Government thought it could safely let Liebknecht rant to his heart's content.
Dr. Liebknecht had long been a thorn in the War Party's side. He inherited an animosity to Prussian militarism from his late father, Dr. Wilhelm Liebknecht, who with August Bebel founded the modern German Social Democratic Party. Four or five years before the war Liebknecht, a lawyer by profession, campaigned so fiercely against militarism that he was sentenced to eighteen months' fortress imprisonment for ”sedition.” He served his sentence, and soon afterwards his political friends nominated him for the Reichstag for the Royal Division of Potsdam, of all places in the world, knowing that such a candidature would be as ironical a blow as could be dealt to the war aristocrats. He was elected by a big majority in 1913, the votes of the large working-cla.s.s population of the division, including Spandau (the Prussian Woolwich), being more than enough to offset the military vote which the Kaiser's henchmen mobilised against him. Some time afterwards Liebknecht was also elected to represent a Berlin Labour const.i.tuency in the _Prussian Diet_, the Legislature which deals with the affairs in the Kingdom of Prussia, as distinct from the Reichstag (the _Imperial Diet_), which concerns itself with Empire matters only.
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