The programme, it will be observed, is a lengthy one about which many treatises might be written, and indeed it sums up a world of thought, on which the Social Democratic mind has been exercised for more than a generation. It will be seen that the materialistic conception of history and the theory of surplus value of Marx are not expressed in the programme, though they _may_ be taken as underlying it by those who emphasise those two leading principles of Marx. The Social Democracy of Germany, therefore, is not committed to the special theories of Marx to the extent that is commonly supposed, though the general lines on which the programme is constructed owe their elucidation greatly more to him than to any other man. The various points of the programme will, we may be assured, be subjects of discussion and of education for the industrious and intelligent working class of Germany for many a year to come. It embodies their thoughts and interests, their aspirations and ideals, in the social economic and political sphere, but it represents no fixed system of dogma. It is meant to be a living creed, mirroring a living movement. We have thus briefly sketched the rise of the German Social Democratic party from 1863 to 1890. It is a short period, but full of change and trouble. The party has come victoriously through a very hard school. We have seen how low and feeble were the beginnings of the party. We have seen also how hard at every step of its career has been its experience of the German police. Indeed the Prussian and German executive has left no means untried to suppress and destroy the movement. Looking back on the development of the party we cannot doubt that at certain decisive stages greater wisdom and insight might have been shown by its leaders. The ascendency of Prussia should have been recognised as an inevitable fact which unquestionably made for progress in the unification of Germany. In this aspect at least the work of Bismarck was profoundly progressive. We may safely assume that the unification and regeneration of Germany would never have been accomplished by a talking apparatus like the Frankfort Parliament of 1848; and we can see no other force that could have succeeded except the military power of Prussia. And we may further add that the present policy of the Social Democratic party in refusing to vote for the budgets, if it were seriously to weaken the German executive, would in the existing state of Europe be disastrous in the last degree. That men like Liebknecht should hate the Junker party as the hereditary oppressors of the poor was natural; but the Junkers have had and still have a great historic function as the heads of the forces political and military which have again made Germany a nation. Their way of making the new Germany has not been the ideal way, let us say; but it has been the way of fact, and no exercise of revolutionary impatience of Marx or Liebknecht has been able to arrest or reverse the fact.