The Reichstag of Germany is supposed to be the popular assembly. In reality, it is the bulwark of wealth. Under this system, man belongs to property, not property to man. Voters, who have paid one-third of the total income tax, elect one-third of the electors, who choose one-third of the Reichstag. Voters who pay the next third do likewise, and the same system applies to the last third. In 1908, 293,000 voters chose the first third; 1,065,240 selected the second third, and 6,324,079 elected the last third. Thus, 4 per cent of the voters elected the first third, 14 per cent the second, and the last third, 82 per cent—all the poor people were thrown together and controlled by the other two-thirds, or 18 per cent. In free countries, the State exists for the benefit of the individual. In Germany, the individual lives exclusively for the State. He has no right to free speech, free thought, the pursuit of happiness, nor even to existence itself, unless the Kaiser sees it to his advantage to grant, or permit, those luxuries. In case a popular measure slipped through the Reichstag, it would have to be voted upon by the Bundesrath—a secret upper house appointed by the princes—not the people, of each separate State of the German Empire. Each State votes as a unit. No amendment can pass the Bundesrath if fourteen out of the sixty-one votes are cast against it. The Kaiser, representing Prussia, holds seventeen votes, and three for Alsace-Lorraine. So, the individual German voter’s work is carefully nullified by this system, over which he has no control. He is outvoted by wealth in the Reichstag. The Reichstag is outvoted by the aristocracy of the Bundesrath. This, in turn, is outvoted by the Autocracy of the Kaiser. Autocracy, aristocracy and wealth compose the Board of Strategy and officer the army. The army is superior to the Reichstag. It is outside of and above the law, within the country but not responsible to it. It is not an army of the people, it is the Kaiser’s army. So the Bundesrath, the Reichstag, the Board of Strategy, the controlled newspapers and political professors, extending down from the throneroom to the kindergarten, are meshes in the net that entangles man whose rights they have usurped. Through that system, the child is caught in infancy, given Kultur with mother’s milk, then taught to spy upon family and neighbors; he listens to political professors at school, political parsons at church. The more he informs the further he advances, till he reaches the army, where docility and obedience and respect for authority are instilled into him till he can have neither original ideas nor independent thought.