o abandon its principles. He did
not deny that a majority of the organization in Baden and also in Hesse
agreed with its representatives. But he attributed this partly to the
fact that the revisionists controlled the Baden party newspapers, which
he accused of being partisan and of not giving full information, and
partly to the regrettable influence of "leaders." Similar conditions
occur internationally, and Bebel's words, like so much that was said and
done at this Congress, have the highest international significance.

"The peoples cannot at all grasp why one still supports a government
which one would prefer to set aside to-day rather than to-morrow," he
said. "A part of our leaders no longer understand, and no longer know
what the masses have to suffer. You have estranged yourselves too much
from the masses.

"Formerly it was said that the consuls should take care that the state
suffers no harm. _To-day one must say, let the masses take care that the
leaders prepare no harm. Democratic distrust against everybody, even
against me, is necessary. Attend to your editors._" These expressions,
like the others I have quoted, received the greatest applause from the
Congress.

It was almost unanimously agreed that, although the Socialist members of
the Baden legislature had acted against the decision of the previous
Nuremburg Congress, it was neither wise nor necessary to proceed so far
as expulsion, and Bebel especially was in favor of acting as leniently
as possible, but this does not mean that he found the slightest excuse
for the minority or that he failed to let them understand that he would
fight them to the end, if they did not yield in the future to the
radical majority.

"If a few among us should be mad enough," he said, "to think of a
split, I know it is not coming. The masses will have nothing to do
with it, and if a small body should follow, it would not take three
months until we would have them again in our armies. Our friends in
South Germany who are against our resolution ought to ask
themselves if, since the Nuremburg Congress, there has not appeared
a noteworthy reversal of sentiment. Now to-day North Bavaria is
thoroughly against the granting of the budget. Nuremburg is
decidedly against it. Stuttgarters and others who spoke at that
time occupied an entirely different standpoint to-day. The Hessian
minority against the granting of the budget was