Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/291

 .] Germany. — The Socialists. [283

insular situation with a colonial empire of 400,000,000 inhabi- tants, America enclosed between two oceans, France with two separate seaboards and a colonial empire with 40,000,000 in- habitants, must naturally attach the highest importance to their Navies. Germany, on the other hand, had no seaboard on the ocean. Her coasts were of limited extent, and her frontiers were in the main inland. The manner in which the German Navy schemes had been announced with a flourish of trumpets was contrary to all sound policy. By declaring to the whole world how many ships they intended to build before 1917 they were simply provoking other countries to enter into a race with them in naval construction. When that period had been reached German naval inferiority would very probably be greater than ever.

Herr Bichter's speech practically closed the discussion, which had only come in as a side issue to the Estimates, and after the latter had been referred to the Budget Committee, the House separated for the Christmas holidays, it being understood that the full details of the Government scheme for the increase of the Navy would be laid before it after the New Year.

The German Socialists, who were naturally much elated by the rejection of the Penal Servitude Bill, obtained a further triumph in July. Their principal organ, the Vorwarts (there are no less than seventy-three Socialist papers in Germany), was sued for libel by the Saxon chief court of justice on the ground that one of its writers had stated that the above court had declared the members of the Labour party not to have the same legal rights as other citizens. The case came before the supreme court of Berlin, which not only acquitted the Socialist writer, but definitely stated that " since 1890 r when the law of 1878 against the Social Democratic agitation was allowed to lapse, there no longer exist any explicit legal regulations applicable to Socialists as opposed to the members of other political parties, and that it is therefore demanded by public opinion that even Socialists must now be allowed the full benefit of the principle of the equality of all citizens before the law." Another Socialist victory was the decision of the philosophical faculty in the university of Berlin in the case of Dr. Axons, a lecturer on physics, whom the Minister of Education proposed to dismiss from his post on the ground that he held Socialist opinions, the faculty having decided against the minister and in favour of the lecturer.

The tenth congress of the German Social Democratic party was held at Hanover on October 8, nearly 6,000 delegates being present. A long discussion took place on a pamphlet by Herr Edward Bernstein, of London, advocating the peaceful evolution of Social Democracy into a party of labour and social reform. This view was supported at the congress by Herr Vollmar, the leader of the Bavarian Socialists, and Herr Auer, the ablest of the Socialists in the German Parliament, but was