Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/786

 766 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

a precise and firm social principle, nor a compact and original social political program. It is very apparent that individual Christians who accept the general social ethical principles with earnestness and convictions, at the moment when they proceed to realize them by action in practical politics and social politics, are disposed to follow the most diverse paths determined by temperament, education, abilities, and social position. Very properly does Christianity decline to proceed beyond the point where its ethics begin to be made an affair of a particular politi- cal and social party. It supplies members of each party with the right spirit and the right disposition, but it does not furnish them a program. Therefore a movement which will draw the ethics of Christianity into the contests of social politics as an influence must derive its principles and the particulars of its program from other sources than Christianity.

Those of the Christian Social tendency who had a clear view of this position joined together in consequence, about two and one-half years since, into a new and directly political party group. The national interest became for them the constitutive principle of their program and of their social efforts, which continued as before to be inspired by the social and ethical spirit of Christianity, and sought to bring this spirit to apprehension and authority. Thus arose in the summer of the year 1896 the National Social party. Its leader is Pastor Frederick Naumann, a man of about thirty-eight years of age. Educated men as well as workingmen are counted among his adherents. The movement is already organized in more than half of the elective districts of the German Reichstag; it has for its organ the weekly paper, Die Hilfe, a bimonthly, Die deutsche Volks-Stimme, two dailies, and several small local and society papers.

The fundamental thoughts of its program are the following: The development of Germany to even greater power, energy, and welfare must be the first object of all practical politics. This object will be attained primarily by means of an ever-increasing economical and political development of the foreign power of the German empire. Therefore the growth and extension of German industry, of its foreign markets, and of its commercial