The Council was reconstituted with Majoritarians, and the Independents were thrown back upon the Communists and "direct action." The only course then left to the adherents of the Council movement was to perfect their organisations and wait until parliamentary government was overthrown, either by reaction or revolution. The first essential for such organisation was a general electoral system which would put the Councils on a regular basis and prevent such interference and intrigues as had preceded the previous Congress. The last meeting that I attended of the Plenary Assembly of Berlin Councils, the driving body of the movement, was occupied with discussing the crucial question as to who should be considered a workman and qualified to vote and stand for a Council. It was there tentatively agreed that a workman might have a few assistants without becoming an employer, and that scientists, experts, and such like connected with an industry, other than managers, directors and such, might count as workmen. On the other hand the Assembly had to adjourn for a time in disorder owing to protests against the presence of a police official as a delegate of the Democrats. It was clearly going to be difficult to express in terms of an electoral law a disability obvious enough in each individual case. The German workmen were ready to admit to equality anyone with any industrial productive status, who was not in the service of declared enemies of the Councils--such as the captains of industry or the Coalition Government. And so important is this suffrage question as a gauge of the liberality of the Council movement in Germany and of its distinction from Bolshevism, that I append as a footnote the regulation of the Berlin Executive Council, published previous to the Convention of the second Congress of Councils.[G] This work of making the Council system really representative has been much hampered of late by the growing reaction which is still trying to break the neck of the movement by arresting its leaders, and impeding its development in every way. At the same time, schemes are being continually put forward by the less reactionary elements for drawing the teeth of the movement by "diddling" concessions. Among such may be counted the clauses "anchoring" the Councils in the Constitution. The word itself shows how rapidly the German politicians are picking up the devices of parliamentary democracy. Again and again, on the platform and in the Press, the workmen are assured that all is well with the Councils because they are "anchored" in the Constitution. What the workmen want is not to see them "anchored" so much as under way; but it is creditable diddling is that catchword, "anchored in the Constitution." And another diddling device is the electoral law advocated by the Majoritarians that the Government are trying to impose on the Councils, which would penetrate the movement with propertied interests and partition it up into regional areas.