It was an interesting experience night after night to watch a country groping its way along political paths but recently opened. The multiplicity of parties into which Germany is split is very confusing to a foreigner. The lines of demarcation in some cases are hard to grasp, and the political life of the Republic would gain in vigour and directness if certain of the groups were combined under one banner. The two main groups, right and left, into which German political life falls are split up into various factions. The Socialist Party is divided into a constitutional right wing, the Social Democrats, and a revolutionary left wing, the “Unabhängige” or Independent Socialists. Since the revolution, various parties have been busily engaged changing their names, a fact which does not simplify the situation, as the old ones still survive in current conversation. The former Liberals--whose views have nothing in common with Liberalism in the English sense--are included to-day in a variety of Capitalist and Conservative groups from the Demokraten (mildly Liberal in our sense of the word) on the left to the Deutschnationale Partei on the right. This last-named tabernacle shelters the Junker and Agrarian elements, and is reactionary to the core. But it is less dangerous than the party which has risen into power of late and bids fair to be thoroughly mischievous, namely, the Deutsche Volkspartei. This is the party of Herr Stinnes and the “schwer Industrie.” It includes the great manufacturers and capitalists, as well as large sections of the Bourgeoisie, has ample funds at its command, and despite some perfunctory patter about democracy, is bitterly anti-democratic in feeling and outlook. These two main divisions of the Socialists and the Bourgeoisie face each other with uncompromising hostility. But the situation is further complicated by a clerical element standing between them, with which happily our own politics are untroubled. The fervour and depth of Catholicism on the Rhineland has been one of the many surprises of Germany to me. In the Rhineland, therefore, questions affecting Church and State are much to the fore, especially the burning question of religious education in the schools. But the cross-correspondences between the Zentrum, the orthodox Catholic party, and the other groups are most bewildering. There are Christian Socialists and Socialists who are very much the reverse. The Zentrum has cooperated for certain purposes with the Social Democrats, which has resulted in a split in its own ranks and the formation of a new party of clerical extremists known as the Christliche Volkspartei.