le-class opinion that has counted, as it counted in England up to fifty
years ago. To the German Government and to the ordinary educated German
the Social Democratic party, though it numbers in its voting ranks over 4
million German workmen and others, does not represent German opinion at
all: it represents something un-German and anti-German--a public enemy.
Between the Social Democrats and the rest of society a great gulf is fixed,
across which no intercourse is possible: as the pioneers who attempted to
introduce the Workers' Educational Association into Germany found, such
intercourse is forbidden from either direction. The Social Democrats are
the "Red Danger," "men who," in the Kaiser's words, are "the enemies of
Empire and Fatherland," and "unworthy" (except, of course, in war-time)
"to bear the name of Germans." We must go back a hundred years in English
history to realise the depth of the animosity between the Social Democratic
party and the rest of German society. "The word Radical," says an English
historian, "conveyed a very different meaning in 1816 to what it does
now.... The hands of the Radicals were supposed to be against every man,
and every man's hand was against them. Scott, when he talks of rebels in
arms, always styles them Radicals. 'Radicalism is a spirit,' wrote the
Vicar of Harrow in 1820, 'of which the first elements are a rejection of
Scripture, and a contempt of all the institutions of your country, and
of which the results, unless averted by a merciful Providence, must be
anarchy, atheism, and universal ruin.'"[1] The Vicar of Harrow in 1820 very
fairly sums up the substance of innumerable German speeches, pamphlets, and
election addresses in 1912 on the subject of the Social Democrats.

[Footnote 1: Spencer Walpole, _History of England_, vol. i. p. 348.]

How is this extraordinary position maintained? How is it possible that in a
modern, largely industrial community, the representatives of working-class
opinion should be regarded as public enemies?

The chief reason lies, of course, in the fact that the German Empire is not
a democracy and is not governed by ministers responsible to Parliament. The
immense numbers and rapid growth of the Social Democrats have therefore not
really been a menace to the Government. In fact, it has even been held in
some quarters that it has been to the interest of the German Government,
which is based on the Prussian military caste, to manoeuvre the Social
De