But this revolutionary impetus did not last. As power relapsed to the upper and middle classes particularism reappeared. As the flood tide of revolution drained back, the old channels and watersheds appeared again. Every crisis in modern German history, 1848, 1866 and 1870, had been in the main a movement towards national unity that eventually failed in great measure owing to peculiarities of German character and of Germany's circumstances. And this last Revolution of 1918 was to a large extent the same; but whereas the previous movements had been thwarted by Conservative ideals and institutions, and by the citadels of the past, this movement was most embarrassed by its association with Communist ideals and innovations, like the Councils. So much indeed was this national and centralising factor of the Revolution obscured by the international and socialising feature of it that, at the election of the Constitutional Assembly, such questions as to whether the Constitution should be that of a centralised Republic, like France, or a coalition of Republics, like Switzerland, never came before the public at all. Public opinion was too much occupied with the Revolution in its effect on private life and property, on food and peace, to consider it in its character as another chapter in the history of German unity. The result of the election, however, temporarily settled the issue against centralisation by splitting the Socialist party, and making the moderate Socialist Government dependent on the support of clerical and sectional interests. The constructive impetus of the Revolution was lost and Constitution-making became once more, as on previous occasions, a complicated negotiation with the lesser States.