Upon  all  such  questions  of  civil  qualification  the  Radical
groups  are  in  unison  with  the  extreme  party  of  the  Left,
contending  that  a  little  less  logic  and  more  knowledge  of  human
nature  would  make  for  a  better  feeling  on  both  sides,  and  that
the  inevitable  effect  of  stamping  Socialists  as  necessarily
enemies  of  the  State  is  that  it  tends  to  make  them  so.  It  would
be  interesting  to  speculate  upon  the  course  which  Social
Democracy  might  have  taken  had  it  at  the  outset  been  treated,

•  In  1907  the  Chief  Administrative  Court  of  Prussia  (Oberverwaltungs-
gericht)  decided  that  a  communal  president  who  had  become  a  Social  Democrat
disqualified  himself  from  holding  office  further  under  the  Disciplinary  Law
of  July  21,  1853,  which  states  that  "An  official  who  violates  the  duties
imposed  upon  him  by  his  office,  or  by  his  behaviour,  either  in  his  ofBoe  or  out-
side, shows  himself  unworthy  of  the  respect,  deference,  or  confidence  which
his  profession  requires,  shall  be  subject  to  the  provisions  of  this  law."

31


466   THE  EVOLUTION  OP  MODEEN  GBEMANY

by  a  generation  now  passed  away,  with  more  understanding  and
more  tolerance.  When  Herr  Bebel  sat  in  the  North  German
Diet  in  1867  he  could  say,  "  I  belong  simply  to  the  radical-
democratic,  or,  if  you  like,  the  people's  party."  It  is  easy  to  see
to-day  that  it  would  have  been  worth  a  king's  ransom  to  have
kept  the  Saxon  wood-turner  in  the  channels  of  constitutional
agitation,  as  might  once  have  seemed  possible.
