424 Lord Beay [May 14, 



association can be formed which does not previously submit its rules 

 for approval to the Government. The Austrian Government does not 

 consider that there is any need for strengthening their hands by new 

 laws. 



In Germany intense alarm was created by the spread of a new 

 creed which certainly did not scorn to adopt abstract tenets, which 

 took good care to start from entirely new premises, which proclaimed 

 everybody to have been deceived by everybody else, and which 

 was hailed with a cordial welcome. The question it really opens is 

 this: Can the German people be made prosperous at home without 

 resorting to emigration? Can the resources of the country be de- 

 veloped ? Can the fear be removed that, unless revolutionary means 

 are used, Germany must remain a poor and unhappy country? The 

 solution we should propose, I think, would be the same we gave to a 

 similar crisis after Waterloo. Let trade, manufactures, and agricul- 

 ture bestir themselves ; — remove everything, in whatever shape or 

 form, which hampers their development ; — see how your taxation can 

 be reduced. If this cannot be done without a European under- 

 standing or disarmament, then why not come to this understanding, 

 why not depart from what Mirabeau called " I'industrie nationale de 

 la Prusse la guerre." 



The same burden which presses on Germany, presses on otber 

 States. Education is going on in these other States, and will sooner 

 or later produce the same craving for comfort which it has produced 

 in Germany. This result is inevitable. Education generates greater 

 requirements. State demands made a century ago, and then appearing 

 plausible, will now be severely criticised by those on whom they are 

 made, and by whom they must be approved. If they are not approved, 

 and yet continued all the same, they will prepare a soil on which any 

 weeds may grow. The social democrats know this, and rejoice over 

 all the mistakes which are made by their opponents, and, quite 

 naturally, fear most of all real reformers. Enemies of individual 

 capital, they cannot endure those who would make it possible for 

 everybody to become more or less of a capitalist. Their propaganda 

 thrives on the antagonism between wealth and the proletariat. A 

 society composed of thrifty men, contented because they could enjoy 

 quietly their savings ; a society in which all dishonesty was rigorously 

 ostracised, whenever it could not be treated as a criminal offence ; a 

 society where a certain amount of well-being was within the reach of 

 all, would not yield them a considerable return of converts. 



As long as the average wages of a German mechanic are not much 

 more than half those of an English one, with a heavy income-tax 

 affecting even the smallest incomes, house rent in the great cities 

 enormously high, and the bread winner called away for three years' 

 service at the age of twenty, you may annihilate the liberty of speech 

 of social democracy, but you cannot prevent it from spreading. Pro- 

 cessions will attend fimerals of leaders : 12.000 persons at Breslau of 

 Reinders ; 20,000 to 10,000 persons at Hamburg of Geib ; though it is 



