It is indeed in its efficiency as a bond between the past and the future that the Constitution must be judged; as a bond that will reduce revolution to rapid evolution. Dr. Preuss, its author, claims no more for it than that it will not act as a bar to any normal and natural growth. But it will have to do more than this. It must serve as a bridge by which Germany can safely pass over the immense gulf that separates the Germany of yesterday from the Germany of to-morrow; the Germany of the Courts of Potsdam and of Pumpernickel, from the Germany of the Executive Councils of Berlin and Brunswick. It is a formidable span for any bridge, and, when we look at this Constitution and find one abutment of it in Article 65 consecrating an ultra-mediæval particularism, and the other abutment in Article 165 "anchoring" the ultra-modern forms of industrial councils, we may wonder whether the intervening structure will ever stand the strain. Can the constitutional compromise of Dr. Preuss ever safely convey seventy million people from government by the divine right of princes to government by industrial representation? Even if it does not, and this Constitution is swept away by a second flood-tide of revolution, it will have served a purpose. It will have finally exorcised the constitutional incubus of northern Prussianism and southern particularism. The vague and dangerous powers of Prussian imperial sovereignty and the less dangerous but equally disabling national sovereignties of the Principalities have been swept away. Art. 11 of the Constitution establishes the Commonwealth as a Republic and assigns its sovereignty to the people.[M] Moreover, Art. 178 repeals the Constitution of 1871, while Art. 181 puts the Constitution in force on the authority of the National Assembly alone, thereby finally ending the claim put forward at first by Bavaria that it should be ratified by the Landtag. The difference between the Constitution of 1919 and that of 1871 can indeed best be seen at a glance by comparing their preambles. Here is that of 1871. "H.M. the King of Prussia in the name of the North German Confederation, H.M. the King of Bavaria, H.M. the King of Würtemberg, H.R.H. the Grand Duke of Baden and H.R.H. the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, for those parts of the Grand Dukedom of Hesse South of the Rhine, conclude a perpetual confederation." Compare that with the preamble of this Constitution. "The German people, united in its races, and inspired by the will to restore and reinforce its Realm in liberty and equity, to ensure peace, both inward and outward, and to further social progress, has accorded itself this Constitution."