The Soldiers' Councils, which played the more prominent part in the revolution, and still form part of the organisation, have not succeeded in making headway against the efforts of the Government to demobilise them. Thus a regulation of January 19th reduced them to welfare committees and restricted their right of deposing officers to a mere recommendation. Attempts of the more revolutionary corps to resist authority in December, January and March were put down by the Frei-Corps with excessive and progressive severity; and the large bodies of revolutionary troops that survived the demobilisation, as "Republican Guards," "Public Safety Guards," "People's Naval Division," &c., &c., have been gradually dispersed by the Government's Frei-Corps.[F] So that the Soldiers' Councils as the political organ of the revolutionary fighting forces are losing their importance. Now that the British Admiralty have recognised "welfare committees" in the Navy, it is safe to assert that the Council movement in Germany so far as concerns the armed forces is no longer in advance of ours. Returning, therefore, to the Industrial Councils, we find that in the early days of the revolution the movement spontaneously developed an organisation consisting of a national Central Council, elected by a national Congress of Councils, in its turn elected by local Executive Councils. These were all political institutions, which for a few days enjoyed entire political power. This power passed back to the old political Parties and Parliamentary system, owing to the Council accepting as "Commissaries of the People" Parliamentary politicians, whose sole idea and secret intention it was to reconstitute a Cabinet and reconstruct a Chamber on reformed but not revolutionary lines. The capital error was in trying to realise the revolution by only establishing revolutionary bodies--the Councils--in supervision of, instead of in substitution for, politicians and officials of the old _régime_. This was the cause of the relapse into reaction.