In Belgium, where ultramontanism still predominates among large circles of the population, a number of the Catholic clergy favor woman suffrage because they deem it an effective weapon against Socialism. In Germany, too, a number of conservative members of the Diet have declared themselves in favor of the woman suffrage bills introduced by Socialist members and have explained their position by asserting that they consider woman suffrage a weapon against Socialism. Undoubtedly there is some truth in these opinions, taking into consideration the present political ignorance of women and the strong influence exerted over them by the clergy. But still this is no reason to disfranchise them. There are millions of workingmen, too, who vote for candidates of bourgeois and religious parties against their own class interest and thereby prove their political ignorance, yet no one would propose to disfranchise them for this reason. The withholding or the rape of the franchise is not practiced because the ignorance of the masses--including the ignorance of women--is feared; for what these masses are, the ruling classes have made them. It is practiced because the ruling classes fear that the masses will gradually become wise and pursue their own course. Until recently the various German states were so reactionary that they even withheld from women the right of political organization. In Prussia, Bavaria, Brunswick, and a number of other German states, they were not permitted to form political clubs. In Prussia they were not even permitted to participate in entertainments arranged by political clubs, as was distinctly set down by the supreme court in 1901. The rector of the Berlin University even went so far as to forbid a woman to lecture before a social science club of students. In the same year the police authorities of Brunswick forbade women to take part in the proceedings of the social congress of Evangelists. In 1902 the Prussian secretary of state condescended to give women the permission to attend the meetings of political clubs, but under the condition that they had to take their seats in a part of the hall specially set aside for them, like the Jewish women in their synagogues. Nothing could have better characterized the pettiness of our conditions. As late as February, 1904, Pasadowsky solemnly declared in the Diet: “Women shall keep their hands off politics.” But eventually this state of affairs became unbearable even to the bourgeois parties. The new national law on assembly and organization of April 19, 1908, brought the only marked improvement by establishing equal rights of women in regard to political organization and public assembly.