This Congress had also another function of the first importance. It afforded the only gauge available as to the velocity and volume of the revolutionary revival. The Assembly at Weimar was in this, as in most respects, useless. The Press was so coloured by class and party feeling as to be quite unreliable. While owing to general disorganisation of the country and the disintegrated nature of the revolutionary movement the leaders of it themselves did not know what their forces were. All that was known was that there had been a steady defection from the Majority Socialists supporting the Government and the Parliamentary system to the Independents, in opposition, who advocated a combination of Parliament and Councils; and from the Independents to the Communists, who were for "all power to the Councils." So steady had this leftward flow been that probably the Congress, if left to itself, would have reflected it by coming together with a majority for the Opposition. It would then have been able to begin at once its function of elaborating a suitable compromise between Parliament and Councils. For it is to be assumed that the Communists and the right Majoritarians would have been each in a small minority, with an absolute majority for delegates representing the Independent position. That this was, at the time, the prevalent opinion in the movement is suggested by the delegates from German-Austria associating themselves with the Independents. However, partly for the better preservation of party, power, and place, partly from the pressure of constant "officious" admonitions from us that peace would only be made with a parliamentary government, the German Government did their best to falsify the character of the Congress and get as many Majority Socialists into it as possible by hook or crook. The hook used was a new electoral arrangement prepared by the Central Council which most of the great towns rejected. In some, as in Breslau, the delegates first elected were recalled, and real workmen's representatives substituted. And when the Government found its lost sheep weren't coming home, like Bo-peep, it took its little crook, determined for to find them; and found them indeed, but with the historical result. For if by hook and by crook you make workmen's delegates of country lawyers or country magistrates you cannot expect them to bring much of a working-class tail behind them. So when the Council came together it was distinctly rather parliamentarian than proletarian in its character. But if the Government's object was to cripple and control the Congress it failed. Because the first result of their gerrymandering was that the Communists refused to take part, thereby greatly facilitating the subsequent _rapprochement_ between the two Socialist factions, the Majority and the Independents.