The anger of the Conservatives found vent in the columns of their newspapers and the speeches of their leaders. Their representatives in the Reichstag, clinging to the Government scheme, had voted in sheer desperation against the new tax on increments of wealth and capital, nominally because it infringed the autonomy of the individual States, really because, in striking at increments in wealth due either to a rise in site-values or to inheritance in direct line, it assailed their position, privileged till then, as landed proprietors. IX. It was not to be expected that the Conservatives would accept this defeat without any thought of seeking revenge. The aristocracy who direct the party had supported all the costly proposals for augmenting the military forces, in order to ensure Germany’s triumph in the next war. Their sins now recoiled upon their own heads. From this time forth, the landowners would suffer the common lot of taxpayers, and in the grim struggle that they wage with such amazing vigour against an ungenerous soil, would no longer be able to devote the entire surplus of their income to the improvement of their farms. Their rout was due to the growth of the Socialist vote, to the place won in the Reichstag by Social Democracy, whose magnetic force was attracting both the Christian Democrats of the Centre and the more advanced Liberals. The problem now before them was this: should they submit to the domination of the Left, or should they counteract it, and endeavour to build a dam, once for all, against those Socialist floods that threatened to sap the very foundations of the monarchy? If we bear in mind the views that the Conservative party has in common with the military aristocracy, making the two bodies scarcely distinguishable; its ascendancy over the Imperial Government, whose Chancellors, like Bülow, have called themselves Conservatives by blood and tradition; its influence at Court; the dictatorial spirit of its chiefs, actuated by the most diverse motives, Prussian patriotism, class cohesion, material interests; and finally, the short space of time that elapsed between the passing of the 1913 finance bill and the declaration of war on Russia—if we bear all this in mind, we shall come to the conclusion that the squirearchy took every advantage of that narrow interval, brought great pressure to bear upon the Sovereign, and decided him to precipitate the course of events.