Part 21 (2/2)
Another factor contributed greatly to the growth of the radical Independent Socialist and Bolshevist movement in Germany. This was the obvious dilemma of the Allies in the case of Russia, their undeniable helplessness and lack of counsel in the face of applied Bolshevism.
Thousands of Germans came to believe that Bolshevism was a haven of refuge. Nor was this sentiment by any means confined to the proletariat.
A Berlin millionaire said to the writer in March:
”If it comes to a question of choosing between Bolshevism and Allied slavery, I shall become a Bolshevik without hesitation. I would rather see Germany in the possession of Bolshevist Germans than of any _bourgeois_ government wearing chains imposed by our enemies. The Allies dare not intervene in Russia, and I don't believe they would be any less helpless before a Bolshevist Germany.”
Scores of well-to-do Germans expressed themselves in the same strain to the author, and thousands from the lower cla.s.ses, free from the restraint which the possession of worldly goods imposes, put into execution the threat of their wealthier countrymen.
With the conclusion of the peace of Versailles we leave Germany. The second phase of the revolution is not yet ended. Bolshevism, crushed in one place, raises its head in another. Industry is prostrate. Currency is so depreciated that importation is seriously hampered. The event is on the knees of the G.o.ds.
But while the historian can thus arbitrarily dismiss Germany and the conditions created by the great war, the world cannot. From a material economic viewpoint alone, the colossal destruction of wealth and means of transportation, and the slaughter of millions of the able-bodied men of all nations involved are factors which will make themselves felt for many years. These obstacles to development and progress will, however, eventually be overcome. They are the least of the problems facing the world today as the result of the war and--this must be said now and it will eventually be realized generally--as a result of the Peace of Versailles. The men responsible for this peace declare that it is the best that could be made. Until the proceedings of the peace conference shall have been made public, together with all material submitted to it, including eventual prewar bargains and treaty commitments, this declaration cannot be controverted. One must a.s.sume at least that the makers of the peace believed it to be the best possible.
The _bona fides_ of the peace delegates, however, while it protects them from adverse criticism, is a personal matter and irrelevant in any consideration of the treaty and its probable results. Nor is the question whether any better treaty was possible, of any relevancy. What alone vitally concerns the world is not the sentiments of a few men, but what may be expected from their work. As to this, many thoughtful observers in all countries have already come to realize what will eventually be realized by millions.
The Treaty of Versailles has Balkanized Europe; it has to a large degree reestablished the multiplicity of territorial sovereignties that handicapped progress and caused continuous strife more than a century ago; it has revived smouldering race-antagonisms which were in a fair way to be extinguished; it has created a dozen new _irredentas_, new breeding-places of war; it has liberated thousands from foreign domination but placed tens of thousands under the yoke of other foreign domination, and has tried to insure the permanency not only of their subjection, but of that of other subject races which have for centuries been struggling for independence. Preaching general disarmament, it has strengthened the armed might of one power by disarming its neighbors, and has given to it the military and political domination of Europe. To another power it has given control of the high seas. It has refused to let the laboring ma.s.ses of the world--the men who fought and suffered--be represented at the conference by delegates of their own choosing.
Such a treaty could not bring real peace to the world even if the conditions were less critical and complex. As they are, it will hasten and aggravate what the world will soon discover to be the most serious, vital and revolutionary consequence of the war. What this will be has already been dimly foreshadowed by the almost unanimous condemnation of the treaty by the Socialists of France, Italy, England and nearly all neutral countries.
Virtually all Americans and even most Europeans have little conception of the extent to which the war and its two great revolutions have awakened the cla.s.s-consciousness of the proletariat of all lands.
Everywhere the laboring ma.s.ses have been the chief sufferers. Everywhere composing an overwhelming majority of the people, they have nowhere been able to decide their own destinies or have an effective voice in government except through revolution. Everywhere they have been the p.a.w.ns sacrificed on the b.l.o.o.d.y chessboard of war to protect kings and queens, bishops and castles. They are beginning to ask why this must be and why they were not permitted to have a voice in the conference at Versailles, and this question will become an embarra.s.sing one for all who try to find the answer in the textbooks of governments as governments today exist.
Deplore it though one may, Internationalism is on the march. Nor is it confined even today to people who work with their hands. Its advocates are to be found--have been found by hundreds in America itself--in the ranks of the thinkers of every country. The press in America has for months been pointing out the prevalence of internationalist sentiments among school-teachers and university professors, and it has been gravely puzzled by this state of affairs. It considers it a paradox that Internationalism exists among presumably well educated persons.
One might as well call it a paradox for a victim of smallpox to have an eruption. It is no paradox. It is a symptom. And, incorrectly diagnosed and ignorantly treated, it is a dangerous disease.
The physician diagnoses a disease at the outset, if he can, and aborts it if possible. If it be contagious, he employs precautions against its spread. No part of these precautions consists in ordering other people at the point of a rifle not to catch the disease.
The greatest task of the governments of the world today is to diagnose correctly and treat intelligently. The proletarians have learned their strength. A new era is dawning.
That era will be marked by an internationalism whose character and extent will depend upon the wisdom with which the masters of the world administer the affairs of their peoples. And the question which every man should ask himself today is:
Shall this Internationalism be Red or White?
CHAPTER XIX
The Weimar Const.i.tution
The provisional const.i.tution adopted at Weimar in February, 1919, was naturally only a makes.h.i.+ft. It contained but ten paragraphs, furnis.h.i.+ng the barest outline for the organization of the new state. Its basis was a draft of a proposed const.i.tution made by Dr. Hugo Preuss, a leading authority on const.i.tutional law, who had been appointed Minister of the Interior. This draft was published on January 20th. More than a hundred representatives of the various German states met in the Department of the Interior at Berlin on January 25th to consider it. This conference appointed a commission from its number, which was in session for the next five days in Berlin and then adjourned to Weimar, where it finished the draft of the provisional const.i.tution.
Even the short period intervening between the first publication of the Preuss draft and its submission to the National a.s.sembly had sufficed to bring about one important and significant development. Preuss himself was an advocate of the so-called _Einheitsstaat_, a single state on the French plan, divided into departments merely for administrative purposes. Many of his friends of the German Democratic Party and all Socialists also wanted to do away with the separate states, both for doctrinal and selfish partisan reasons. Preuss realized from the beginning the impossibility of attaining his ideal completely, but he endeavored to pave the way by a dismemberment of Prussia, the largest and dominant German state, and by doing away completely with several of the smaller states, such as Anhalt, Oldenburg, etc. His const.i.tutional draft of January proposed the creation of sixteen ”territories of the state” (_Gebiete des Reichs_): Prussia (consisting of East Prussia, West Prussia, and Bromberg), Silesia, Brandenburg, Berlin, Lower Saxony, the three Hansa cities (Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck), Upper Saxony, Thuringia, Westphalia, Hesse, the Rhineland, Bavaria, Baden, Wurtemberg, German-Austria, and Vienna.
It became quickly apparent that Preuss and his followers had underestimated the strength of the particularistic, localized patriotism and respect for tradition cherished by a great part of the Germans. Not only were the South Germans aroused to opposition by the implied threat of a possible eventual onslaught on their own state boundaries, but the great majority of the Prussians as well protested mightily against the proposed dismemberment of Prussia. The unitarians saw themselves compelled to yield even in the temporary const.i.tution by inserting a provision that ”the territory of the free states can be altered only with their consent.” The plan to reduce the states to mere governmental departments was thus already defeated.
With the erection by the National a.s.sembly of the _Staatenausschuss_, or Committee of the States,[67] the draft of the const.i.tution was laid before that body for further consideration. On February 21st the committee submitted the result of its deliberations to the National a.s.sembly, which referred it in turn to a special committee of twenty-eight members, whose chairman was Conrad Haussmann, a member of the German Democratic Party.
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