Count Hertling, trying blunderingly to redeem his democratic promises, made a tactlessly naive speech in the Prussian House of Lords in favor of the government's franchise-reform measures. These bills, although representing a decided improvement of the existing system, had been bitterly criticized by all liberal elements because they did not go far enough, but had finally been reluctantly accepted as the best that could be hoped for in the circumstances. A majority existed for them in the Prussian Diet, but the Junkers and noble industrialists of the House of Lords would hear of no surrender of their ancient rights and privileges. The Chancellor in his speech warned the Lords that they could avoid the necessity of making still more far-reaching concessions later by adopting the government's measures as they stood. To reject them, he declared, would be seriously to imperil the crown and dynasty. He closed with an appeal to his hearers to remember the services rendered to the Fatherland by men of all political creeds, including the Socialists. Count Hertling's speech displeased everybody. The Conservative press assailed him bitterly. The _Deutsche Tageszeitung_, chief organ of the Junkers, called him "the gravedigger of the Prussian monarchy." The _Kreuzzeitung_ charged him with minimizing the crown's deserts and exaggerating the services of the Socialists. The liberal _bourgeois_ and the Socialist press said in effect: "And so this is our new democratic Chancellor who advises the House of Lords to block an honest democratic reform of Prussia's iniquitous franchise system." The _Germania_, chief organ of the Clericals, Hertling's own party, damned the speech with faint praise. Talk of a "chancellor crisis" was soon heard, and by the middle of September there was little doubt that Hertling's days were numbered. Nothing else can so adequately indicate the reversal of conditions in Germany as the fact that one of the men named oftenest even in _bourgeois_ circles as a likely successor to Count Hertling was Philip Scheidemann, a leader of the Majority Socialists. The _vaterlandslose Gesellen_ were coming into their own. The crisis became acute on September 20th. The government unofficially sounded the Majority Socialists as to their willingness to participate in a coalition government. The question was discussed on September 22d, at a joint conference of the Socialist Reichstag deputies and the members of the party's executive committee. Although one of the cardinal tenets of Socialism had always forbidden participation in any but a purely Socialist government, the final vote was nearly four to one in favor of abandoning this tenet in view of the extraordinary situation confronting the empire. With eighty votes against twenty-two the conference decided to send representatives into a coalition government under the following conditions: