Accordingly the Democratic parliamentary party having declared unanimously against signature, the Centrum and Majority Socialists followed suit with large majorities--only five in the latter party voting for signature. The Government Press then began to challenge the Independents to make good their professed policy; with the intention of forcing them to form a Government which would take the odium of signing. The Independent leaders were approached on these lines. The Independents found themselves in a difficulty. At first they were inclined to accept, but realised in time that if they did so they would be utterly prejudiced both politically and popularly. Moreover, their Left wing and the Communists would not join any Government on a Parliamentary basis; while the Majority Socialists would probably help the Right in throwing them out again on a nationalist reaction as soon as they had signed. They accordingly decided to declare for signature, but to refuse to relieve the Government from the responsibility for its own policy. The parliamentary situation accordingly developed by Monday into the usual deadlock. But in Germany the parliamentary situation represents, even less than elsewhere, the realities of life. The meeting of the Assembly on Monday, which was to be a national demonstration, was a failure both in staging and in steam. Held in the University aula, under the great fresco of Fichte rallying the German youth to its resurrection after the peace of Tilsit, it only served to accentuate the difference between the nationalist idealism that rebuilt Germany in the last century and the internationalist idealism that may rebuild it now. For, in this Assembly of more or less compromised and wholly commonplace elderly politicians there was nothing vital or novel. The set speeches had mostly been written by propaganda officials and the very applause had been planned beforehand. On the following day were open-air meetings, which gave a better index of public opinion. Of the two I saw, the first was a big Majority Socialist gathering, addressed by Fischer on the Koenigsplatz in a speech curiously like Scheidemann's. Thence a crowd that, if small, was select, one might say "super" select, demonstrated before the Hotel Adlon, the centre of the foreign correspondents and Missions, until dispersed by a rather dilatory detachment. But the foreign correspondents of course responded to these efforts for their entertainment and enlightenment with sensational "stories" of "Scenes in Berlin." The conclusion I came to was that those German working men who were still under trade unionist and party leaders, would, with the middle class, follow the Government lead in this, as in anything else.