By the middle of February, when the new Government was proclaimed at Weimar, a communist revolution had been converted into a constitutionalist reconstruction; and that this corresponded with the desire of the majority of the people was shown by the election result. Every man and woman over twenty was entitled to vote, and a high percentage did so; while the system of proportional representation employed, whatever its defects, at least gave a fair numerical representation of the party presentments of public opinion. As in the English election, nationalism decided the issue in favour of the party in power. The Independent opposition was discredited by Bolshevism, the Conservative opposition by Kaiserism. Apart from the women the Social-Democrats would probably have had an independent majority; but, as was shown by the Pfalz results in which the women's voices were kept separate, they were more conservative and clerical than the men. As it was, the Majority Socialists with 163 out of 423 members were forced into alliance, not with the Independent Socialists who had only 22 votes, but with the Democratic Liberals who had 75. And as this relieved them of all responsibility to the revolution there was no reason why they should not further strengthen their parliamentary position by taking in the Clerical Centre with its 55 votes as well. And thus Germany got from losing the war a coalition as strong parliamentarily and as weak politically as that which winning the war gave to us. While the revolution was being side-tracked in Parliament, it was being sandbagged in the Proletariat. A division of Frei-Corps with all the machinery of modern war, tanks, aeroplanes, etc., was sent against the north-western coast ports where the revolution had originated and where Spartacus was pursuing its policy of aggravating the food difficulty by preventing the sailing of food ships as arranged under the armistice. Bremen was entered by force, after fighting; and the other towns opened negotiations. On the eastern frontier a front was formed against the Poles, who had occupied nearly all Posen province, and fighting continued until the Allies stopped it. Great efforts were made to get together some sort of effective force as a basis for government; and the resultant Frei-Corps, though at this early date still few and inferior, were already enough to give check to the "Bolshevist" menace within and without the frontier. Meantime the whole "soviet" system of councils was practically 'frozen out' and politically 'snowed under.' The Central Council was got to abdicate in favour of the Constituent Assembly: the Socialisation Commission to which execution of the economic revolution had been referred, resigned _re infecta_: while the Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils were quietly ignored. A Provisional Constitution was published in which all ideas of a centralised Socialist republic were abandoned, and the federal