members of the Right. Just then Sgr. Gianturco, a Neapolitan and the Minister of Public Works, was compelled to resign. through ill-health. His place was taken by Sgr. P. Bertolini, a deputy; but Sgr. Tittoni was retained in his post, and the Government faced and repelled the attacks of its adversaries during the short autumn session. It had, moreover, exhibited its energy by again keeping down the Unionist railway agitators. An agrarian strike in the province of Ferrara had been kept in check during July; another, designed to set up a general strike, had been repressed at Bari with some severity; and the Socialists' demonstrations at Florence and Parma on the occasion of their Congresses had not been well received by the mass of the population. The Executive Committee of the party ultimately decided, in November, that there should be neither a railway strike nor interference with the working of the lines. This question enabled the new Minister of Public Works to achieve a sufficiently flattering Parliamentary success. When interpellated on December 6 by the Socialist member for Milan, who ended his speech by demanding an "administrative amnesty" for the railway servants punished for breach of discipline, Sgr. Bertolini answered by denying that the railway workers had the right to strike, and declaring that he would be firm, as well as benevolent, in the direction of the great public services entrusted to his care.

The case of Sgr. Nasi then occupied the Chamber. The Senate, converted into a High Court, had held prolonged sittings at which the commissioners of the Chamber and the counsel for the defence had between them exhausted the resources of legal artifice. The President of the Senate, Sgr. Canonico, had broken down, and the first Vice-President, Sgr. Blaserna, had completed his task.

In its sitting of December 18, the Chamber made up its mind rather tardily to discuss the interpretation of Article 37 of the Constitution, giving the Chamber the right of directing the arrest of Ministers and of bringing them before the High Court. After a thorny debate, a resolution was passed to the effect that the procedure followed toward the defendant was regular, and thus that the precedent now created would for the future have the force of law. Another debate, followed with still greater interest by the Chamber, was that on the payment of members. The question was hardly ripe for settlement, but the fact that it had been raised proved that the state of public feeling on it had been appreciably modified.

To sum up, the year had been laborious, and in spite of the agrarian disorders of Ferrara and the earthquakes in Calabria, it had brought Italy prosperity in the main. In comparison with the preceding years, it might count among the most favourable; comparing Italy with other nations, her lot was not the worst.

T

CHAPTER II.

GERMANY AND AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

I. GERMANY.

THE result of the German elections of 1907 was a triumph of the Government over the Socialists, whose number in the new Reichstag was reduced from 79 to 43, though their total poll was increased from 3,010,771 in 1903 to 3,250,000, far more than that of any other single party in the Empire. The two other parties, however, which had joined with the Socialists in inflicting the defeats of the Government in the previous year, were returned in somewhat larger numbers than before, though not sufficiently to counterbalance the heavy losses of the Socialists; the Centre obtained 105 seats instead of 104, with an increase of their total poll from 1,876,902 to 2,274,097, the Poles obtained 20 seats instead of 16, their total poll increasing from 347,784 to 449,818. The other parties, whose total poll was more than a million less than that of the Centre, the Socialists and the Poles, were distributed as follows, their previous strength being shown in brackets; the two Conservative parties, 83 (74); the National Liberals, 55 (51); the Radical parties, 51 (36); the anti-Semites, including the Agrarian League, 30 (21); and one Dane and one Lorrainer. The Government took a more active part in the elections than it had done on any previous occasion. On January 1, Prince Bülow, in an open letter to General von Liebert, President of the "Imperial Association for combating the Socialist Democracy," member of the governing board of the Pan-Germanic League and a keen supporter of the Navy League, made a violent attack on the Socialists, describing them as the enemies of property, religion, and the Fatherland, and as a party whose policy can only lead to reaction, illustrating his thesis by the remark that Robespierre "was succeeded by the sword of Buonaparte." He was prepared to work with every party "which respects great national points of view," but though "no one in Germany desires a personal régime," "the great majority of the German people is most emphatically against a party régime." He accordingly suggested that "the parties of the Right, the National Liberal party, and the Radical groups which incline still further to the Left . . . might gain so much ground in the election campaign as to be able to form a majority as occasion demanded." The Liberal and Radical organs, however, declared that they would not adopt the Chancellor's suggestion in the absence of any indication that the Government would promote Liberal measures, and the Conservative ones that there can be no coalition with the Liberals unless they should be converted to Conservatism. Referring to the criticisms made on his letter, the Chancellor,

in a speech to a Berlin committee which had arranged to give him a dinner, denied that there was any danger of absolutism; the Emperor had "no thought of claiming rights which do not appertain to him according to the terms of the Imperial Constitution," and in the present elections there was "no question of any popular right except the right to be represented by a majority which will help the federated Governments to maintain German prestige and will not desert brave German soldiers in the face of the enemy." This indeed was the real issue on which the election was fought; it was a question of patriotism and national prestige, and accordingly many electors who under any other circumstances would have voted against the Government, or not have voted at all, on this occasion gave it their support, especially as they were further led to believe by the Chancellor that the enemies of Germany abroad were hoping for a Socialist and Clerical victory. When the news of the Socialists' defeat became known, an enthusiastic crowd assembled in front of the Chancellor's palace, and addressing them from the balcony he said, referring to Prince Bismarck's saying, "Put the German nation in the saddle, and it will be able to ride," that he hoped and believed that the German people had that day shown that it still can ride, adding that "the whole world will recognise that the German nation sits firmly in the saddle, and that it will ride down everything which places itself in the way of its well-being and its greatness.

The most active and energetic of the allies of the Government in its electoral campaign against the Centre and the Socialists was the German Navy League in the person of its manager, Major-General Keim, who in 1905 had been obliged to retire from its executive in consequence of a telegram from the Emperor expressing disapproval of its Chauvinistic agitation (ANNUAL REGISTER, 1905, p. 285). During the elections, the General, who had apparently been again received into the favour of the Court and the Government, disseminated 15,000,000 leaflets, of which 124,000 were sent to school teachers, wrote to Prince Salm, the President of the League, that the Imperial Chancellor had provided out of a fund raised by private subscription a sum of 30,000 marks (1,500l.) for the cost of their publication, and in a letter to a Prussian judge who was taking an active part in the elections, expressed a hope that the Government would show its gratitude for the activity of the League and "will now have the courage to bring in a sensible Navy Bill." At a meeting of the League at Cologne on May 12, General Keim moved that in view of the uninterrupted development of naval armaments by foreign countries, the German programme of naval construction as laid down in the Navy laws of 1900 and 1906 ought to be carried out at a more rapid rate, and in a bellicose speech compared Germany to " man with only a walking-stick" who had fallen among "ruffians armed with bludgeons." The motion was carried with

a

much enthusiasm, after Field-Marshal von Hahnke had conveyed to the meeting the Emperor's grateful acknowledgment of the League's "magnificent work." In December, however, great dissatisfaction was caused in the South German, and especially the Bavarian, branches of the League, most of whose members belonged to the Centre party, by the election, as its President, of General Keim, who, besides having been the chief agitator against the Centre at the general election, was the mainspring of the agitation for a much larger increase of the Navy than that proposed by the Government. Prince Ludwig, the heir to the throne of Bavaria, together with his son, Prince Ruprecht and all the members of the Bavarian branch consequently resigned, and their example was followed by the Baden branch. The moderate members of the League in Prussia were advised by the Berliner Tagblatt also to retire, "as the League has been the source of the constant agitation which threatened to put Germany at enmity with the whole world, and especially with England.'

The new Reichsrath was opened on February 19 with a Speech from the Throne declaring that the German nation, called upon to give its decision in the difference between the Federated Governments and the majority of the last Reichstag, had shown that it wished to have the honour and estate of the nation faithfully and strongly guarded in no petty party spirit. "In such strength of national feeling uniting citizens, peasants and workmen," proceeded the Speech, "the destinies of the Fatherland are well protected. As I am resolved to respect conscientiously all constitutional rights and privileges, so I am confident that the new Reichstag will recognise it as its supreme duty to preserve and strengthen intelligently, and with readiness to act, our position among the civilised nations." In the debate which followed most of the party leaders criticised Prince Bülow's conduct during the elections, and were very sceptical as to the possibility of forming a Liberal-Conservative "bloc" such as he hoped for. The Radical leader, Herr Wiemer, intimated quite plainly that his party would not be satisfied with mere goodwill on the part of the Government, but would demand Liberal measures, one of the most pressing of which was a redistribution of seats, as the Reichstag has under the existing law become "a caricature of a representative Chamber." He also sharply criticised the commercial policy of the Government and the election campaign which it had conducted through the instrumentality of General Keim and the Navy League. Ministers took part in elections in England and France, but there they were party leaders, while in Germany the Government professed to be above party, and its employment of Government officials and Army officers for purposes of electoral agitation was entirely illegitimate. The anti-Semite leader, Herr Liebermann von Sonnenberg, said that in his distribution of gifts the Chancellor had given the Conservatives the fruit and the Lib

erals the flowers, that the offspring of a union between the Conservatives and the Liberals would be a mongrel, and that the Liberals would soon discover that Prince Bülow would not be able to govern on Liberal lines as they conceived them; while Herr Schrader, head of the Free-thinking section of the Radical party, declared that he was prepared to support a reasonable Colonial policy, but that any one who should believe that he and his political friends were going to sacrifice their convictions to any Conservative-Liberal formula would be very much mistaken. The general disapproval with which Prince Bülow's interference in the elections was viewed by the House was manifested by the cancelling by the Electoral Committee of the election of a Conservative who was opposed by a Socialist candidate, on the ground that during the election the Chancellor had telegraphed to the local paper that all bourgeois parties, regardless of their differences, must combine in voting against a Socialist. On the other hand, the Prince's position in the country was considerably strengthened by the removal from the Court of the principal members of the Camarilla which had for some years been undermining his influence with the Emperor, and was said to have brought about the fall of Count Caprivi in 1894. These were Prince Philip Eulenburg, General Count Kuno Moltke, Commander of Berlin, and General Count Hohenau; their downfall, however, was not owing to their political activity, but to certain charges of disgraceful moral depravity which were made against them by Herr Maximilian Harden, editor of the Zukunft, and which were brought to the Emperor's notice by the Crown Prince. Count Kuno Moltke gave up his appointment as Commandant of Berlin and was placed on halfpay; he then, in order to clear his character, challenged Herr Harden to fight a duel with him, but the latter did not accept the challenge, and finding that the Public Prosecutor would not take up his case, the Count brought an action for libel against his accuser. The action was tried by a young judge with two assessors, a butcher and a milkman, at the end of October, and the opportunity was taken by Herr Harden and his counsel of discussing matters affecting the most exalted personages at Berlin and of making revelations as to some of the most momentous incidents of German home and foreign policy. The real points at issue were thus obscured; counsel were allowed to quote statements and letters of absent persons without producing them in court, and when the trial abruptly ended with a verdict of acquittal it was generally admitted that the matter could not rest there. The Public Prosecutor started a new trial on behalf of the Government, which was not concluded at the end of the year.

An action of a similar character, but brought by no less a personage than the Imperial Chancellor, was tried by the Criminal Court of Berlin on November 6. An eccentric publicist named Brand had made certain monstrous charges against