In other democratic lands such a situation can hardly arise. There the parliamentary majority decides the policy of the Government, and if the Socialists form part of that majority, they can effectively influence policy, and so there can be no idea of the working classes having to conduct a political mass-strike against this Government. In Germany it is different. Here the voting of the imperial budget and of the war credits is not much more than a theoretical confession of faith in the Fatherland; to belong to the Reichstag majority is not a guarantee of real political power. A few Generals, a few influential bank directors and big manufacturers can, under given circumstances, influence policy more effectually than the whole Reichstag majority. Thus, indeed, it can happen that the Government's policy seems very little influenced by socialism, though this latter supports the Government; that, consequently, a considerable part of the working classes decides upon a political strike against the Government which for three and a half years has enjoyed the support of the majority of working class Deputies in the Reichstag. And only thus can we explain the strange spectacle, inexplicable to any other country, that a Government in whose formation Social Democracy has had a share, and which at every division is supported by the Socialists, knows no other means of meeting a strike save by forbidding meetings, introducing a state of siege and militarizing! The bloc policy is dangerous everywhere; but these dangers are incomparably greater in the classic land of Government by authority (Obrigkeitsregierung) than in the democratic countries. The unedifying picture which German Social Democracy presents today is at bottom the result of German sham democracy, of the poverty and backwardness of German political life. But, in spite of all, we hope that even the German strike will not have an unfavorable effect on future development. Many a struggle which had to end without tangible success has, later on, proved fruitful after all! So it will be this time. The German Government did not have to give the workmen any definite assurances; but it had learned that every extension of the war provokes the gravest social dangers; and if this time it still found it easy to dispose of the strike, because a large section of the working classes still trusts in it, all its force (Machtmittel) would avail it nothing, if the whole German working class once acquired the conviction that the Government is prolonging the war for the sake of Pan-German lust of conquest. [Illustration] Last Fight of the Mary Rose A British Naval Episode