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Constitution

Bismarck left out two of the political forces of the time. One was the Liberal party. The omission was deliberate. Bismarck had fought it at the crisis of his career. He had beaten it, and by beating it had made the Empire possible. He regarded it as a sham, broken for the moment and useless for the future. Nor was he mistaken. Eugen Richter's party was a sham; it consisted of a number of middle-class gentlemen who pretended to be democrats. Bismarck saw that the middle classes were too feeble to count, and overlooked the masses altogether. Modern Germany has both a middle class and a working class. The former has come into being with the industry which it has created. Numerically small, it is the richest party in Germany, and gold weighs heavily in the political scales. Politically that working class was created by the suffrage which Bismarck granted, but it was denied adequate expression. Deprived of any form of Ministerial control, the Reichstag found itself a fifth wheel to the political coach, and the democrats were driven to a policy of passive resistance. The tactics pursued by the Socialist Left have brought about the extraordinary situation that a party which is now supported by more than three million voters has never exercised the slightest influence on the course of legislation. A policy of pure negation stands self-condemned, but in justice to Herr Bebel and his colleagues it must be admitted that their position was largely forced upon them by circumstances.

The financial scheme propounded by Prince Bülow was, in one aspect, a concession to the claims of the industrialists and the multitude. It was on the left wing-on the Liberals and on the Socialists-that he had to rely, and in the critical division he was beaten by it. He had attempted to give the

Left that position in politics which it had a certain right to hold. He had aimed at a change in the balance of the Constitution, and he was defeated. And here the question arises: Why did Prince Bülow resign? Why not dissolve, and if necessary dissolve again and again until he had at last convinced the reactionaries that he had behind him a combination of money and votes which was stronger than any Constitution and for which any workable Constitution must find room? It is at this point that we come upon the second of Bismarck's omissions.

He forgot the Chancellor. He forgot, that is, to provide for an office which was something in itself apart from the dominant personality of its first occupant. Even as it was, Bismarck had to clothe himself with powers belonging properly to the Emperor as head of the Executive, and it was by depriving him of these powers that William II. eventually forced his resignation.

But not until the crisis of last November did the full weakness of the Chancellor's position become apparent. At first sight, indeed, there never was a moment when the Chancellor was more powerful For the first time since Bismarck's dismissal he found himself in direct opposition to the Emperor, and it was the Emperor who surrendered. But the victory was won not by the Chancellor but by the forces behind him. He spoke as the representative of the Federal Council, he had at his back all the influence of the Federated Governments, thoroughly scared at the difficult position in which the Empire had been placed by an irresponsible manager of foreign politics. Prince Bülow was far too astute a man to mistake his position. By himself he knew he was helpless. Behind him must stand either the Emperor or the Federal Council. Circumstances forced him to rely on the Council, and it was

with their support that he formulated his scheme of financial reform.

At the critical moment that support was withdrawn. He had prepared plans so generous to the States in the matter of their financial contributions to the Empire that the Liberals were up in arms from the first. Somewhat to the surprise of the Federated Governments the majority in the Reichstag proved to be even more particularist than themselves. Prince Bülow was supported by the entire Left, by the very parties which regard the States Governments as the pillars of reaction and which are pledged to diminish their authority. Only by a dissolution which would result in the return of these parties in greater strength could the reforms be carried. Is it to be wondered that the Council refused to render a service to their bitterest enemies? The Prince found himself helpless. The Emperor could not support him. He had promised to efface himself seven months before, and an Emperor does not break his word. The Federal Council would not support him; the Reichstag, apparently the dominant factor, was in reality only able to force its will through the tacit concurrence of the Council, and was itself constitutionally inadequate to carry through a constructive policy. The Chancellorship suddenly emerged in all its weakness as the mouthpiece of the strongest political force in the State.

There is then no need to trouble about Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg's programme, which will probably not be disclosed until the new session is opened in the autumn. But, whatever it be, it will not be his own programme but that of the victorious particularists. He is indeed in an even weaker The Saturday Review.

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position than was his predecessor during the last fortnight of his term of office. Prince Bülow held a deserved reputation as an expert in foreign pol itics. He had been a most successful ambassador, and as a diplomatist was probably unsurpassed in Europe. successor knows nothing of diplomatic work. The Emperor has chosen an expert in home affairs to deal with the domestic crisis which now confronts Germany. There is no need to question the absolute disinterestedness of his motives, but he cannot be blind to the increase in his own influence which the new appointment involves. He has pledged his word to be a constitutional Sovereign, but the Constitution expressly states that he is to represent the Empire in foreign affairs. His Chancellor is to accept responsibility for foreign policy as far as the people at home are concerned, but that in no way permits a Chancellor to dictate a policy to his master. Prince Bülow, indeed, could possibly venture to do so, but that was because of the experience of the man and not on account of the importance of his office. Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg is a cipher in foreign affairs, and in the constitutional conflict he is not the protagonist but the prize of victory. There are three forces contending for supremacy in Germany to-day-there is the Emperor with his military and naval authority and his position as representative of the Empire as regards foreign States; there are the States, whose organ is the Federal Council; and there is the people as represented, or misrepresented, by the Reichstag. The Chancellor does not count, and History, who is a divinity with a sense of humor, smiles ironically over Bismarck's work.

PRESENTIMENTS.

At the inquest held last week on the victims of the disaster at Newport, where many men were killed by a fall of earth in a deep trench, one of the witnesses, a timberman named Thomas Baker, said that he had come out of the trench just before the accident owing to "a feeling of nervousness." "I felt myself shivering," he declared, "and I told the ganger I was going home." When he was asked to give a reason for his nervousness, he said that he could not give any except this: "God on high must have warned me." We wonder how many times we have read after serious accidents that somebody had a presentiment that an accident would happen. Such a statement seems to be an almost indispensable part of the narratives. Unless Thomas Baker when he reported his presentiment was under a delusion, which would be conceivable in the circumstances-his mates crushed and buried under the earth, and himself saved only by the space of a few moments from the same fate-he did come up from his work owing to his presentiment. By the delusion theory, of course, the presentiment is very easily explained: the man felt unwell-was giddy, or faint, perhaps was suffering only from indigestion-and afterwards when he was the prey of nervous shock, and possibly of superstition, he read a great deal of significance into what had been a fortunate accident. That explanation may very well be true; but it is, after all, just as likely that the man really did have a presentiment. Such things continually happen. When we have admitted that much we are unfortunately no nearer to the interesting point of proving whether presentiments are conveyed by some ultra-natural or supernatural process. Let us take it for granted

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that Baker had his presentiment before the accident exactly as he believed afterwards that it had come to him. The sequel may still have been coincidence. Coincidences are so common that the wonder is we should profess to be much surprised at them. If many presentiments are dignified by the success of coming true, there are many others which are not published to the world because they fail. We suppose that there are persons who, under stress of vivid presentiments, have refused to travel by trains or steamers which have arrived at their destinations in perfect safety. Such presentiments are not only expensive and humiliating; they seem to invest Providence-if so be that they are attributed to Providence with a certain flippancy. Moreover, as they are kept from the knowledge of those who would like to balance the useful presentiments against the unjustified ones, it is very difficult to arrive at any conclusion as to what part man has allowed presentiments to play in governing his comings and his goings. Perhaps the world is full of presentiments, and we hear only of those which come true.

The most sceptical mind may consider itself free, however, to admit the fascinations of an inquiry. It leads us at once into immense and puzzling regions. But we need not penetrate into those labyrinths where time is conceived as having no reality among the influences which govern human fate; where the future, past, and present are all one,-where, as Sir Thomas Browne has written of the eternal one, "for Him the Last Trump has already sounded"; and where destiny seems necessarily to conflict with man's great solace and weapon and instinctive possession of free-will. In a recent num

ber of The Annals of Psychical Science Dr. Arnaldo Cervesato has a paper on "Destiny," in which he relates an experience of his own in the operation of what he thinks are certain guiding forces outside himself. He was in Berlin on September 26th, 1908, and was about to enter the underground railway to go to a luncheon-party, when a sudden sense of "a strange well-being" induced him to wheel round and return to his hotel to finish some, important letters which he had reluctantly left a minute before merely because he was too tired to continue writing. "I returned to my work," he says; "and it was whilst I was finishing my correspondence that--on the same line I had been about to travel over-between 1 and 1.30 there occurred that terrible disaster which the English readers of The Annals may still remember; for the disaster of the 26th September last was, after that of the Metropolitan in Paris, two years ago, the most terrible railway catastrophe which has taken place since this system of traction has existed in European cities." We could wish that Dr. Arnaldo Cervesato were accurate in all things. The Paris accident happened nearly six years ago, on August 10th, 1903. Inaccuracy in him, however, does not affect the possibility of what he calls indications or rapports interceding between man and his destiny. He perceives that he may have been saved only by a piece of good luck which had no ordered place in the scheme of his life or of the world, but he prefers to offer this confession of faith:-"In the first place, the further the study of the laws of Nature is carried, the further she seems from yielding any place in the chain of conclusions to the intervention of that unknown but extremely convenient personage, Chance; in the second place, the multiplicity of examples of this kind grows much too important each

day to permit of denying to a whole collectivity of phenomena that right to investigation which one has perhaps exceptionally the option of denying to a few sporadic facts without precedent or sequent." He imagines the guiding "Force" as acting coherently and in accordance with a great natural law,-it makes "the least possible effort in order to produce the greatest possible result." Thus, if he had finished his letters and had no obvious reason for returning to his hotel, the Force would have had to exert a much greater effort to interpose some singular obstacle-to deter him from taking the journey on which his mind was immediately bent. The thought of the persons who were not deterred from taking the journey, and did perish in the accident, will cause some readers to stick at the egoism which is implicit in this argument. Dr. Cervesato thinks the Force capable of absolute and final intervention when necessary by acting by inhibition on the centre of the faculty of the will. We are not troubled by his suggestion that the Force may "function in the reverse," and impel a man unsuspectingly to his doom; but the difficulty we have mentioned before remains with us, that the "Force" often acts on people without any justification. We should like to know the proportion between real and false alarms. He says nothing of this, and of course the matter is of its nature extremely difficult to investigate.

Is it material for poets and mystics alone, this "mysterious selection," as Maeterlinck has called it, which is at work for months or years, or perhaps only for moments, among those who propose to themselves what will be (or would be if they undertook it) a fatal journey? Maeterlinck believes in the reality of the guidance, whatever it may be. In a passage quoted by Dr. Cervesato he says:

It is a remarkable and constant fact that great catastrophes claim infinitely fewer victims than the most reasonable probabilities might have led one to suppose. At the last moment a fortuitous or exceptional circumstance is almost always found to have kept away half, and sometimes two-thirds, of the persons who were threatened by the still invisible danger. A steamer that goes to the bottom has generally fewer passengers on board than would have been the case had she not been destined to go down. Two trains that collide, an express that falls over a precipice, etc., carry less travellers than they would on a day when nothing is going to happen. Should a bridge collapse, the accident will generally be found to occur, in defiance of all probability, at the moment the crowd has just left it. In the case of fires in theatres and other public places, things unfortunately happen otherwise. But there, as we know, the principal danger does not lie in the fire, but in the panic of the terror-stricken crowd. Again, a fire-damp explosion will usually occur at a time when the number of miners inside the mine is appreciably inferior to the number that would habitually be there. Similarly, when a powder factory is blown up, the majority of the workmen, who would otherwise all have perished, will be found to have left the mill for some trifling, but providential, reason. So true is this, that the almost unvarying remark, that we read every day in the papers, has become familiar and hackneyed, as: "A catastrophe which might have assumed terrible proportions was fortunately confined, thanks to such and such a circumstance," etc., etc.; or, "One shudders to think what might have happened had the accident occurred a moment sooner, when all the workmen, all the passengers," etc. Is this the clemency of Chance? We are becoming ever less inclined to credit it with a personality, with design or intelligence. There is more

The Spectator.

reason in the supposition that something in man has defined the disaster; that an obscure but unfailing instinct has preserved a great number of people from a danger that was on the point of taking shape, of assuming the imminent and imperious form of the inevitable; and that their unconsciousness, taking alarm, is seized with hidden panic, which manifests itself outwardly in a caprice, a whim, some puerile and inconsistent incident, that is yet irresistible and becomes the means of salvation.

Is that evidence of a more "legal" kind than we have in Wordsworth's lines on "Presentiments"?

How oft from you, derided Powers!
Comes Faith that in auspicious hours
Builds castles, not of air;
Bodings unsanctioned by the will
Flow from your visionary skill,
And teach us to beware.

Yet Wordsworth seems genuinely to have believed in presentiments as having much more than a poetic value, otherwise would he have written the following verse?—

God, who instructs the brutes to scent All changes of the element,

Whose wisdom fixed the scale Of natures, for our wants provides By higher, sometimes humbler, guides, When lights of reason fail.

Those who would documenter this subject would do well, we should think, to collect the evidence on such a terrific event as the earthquake at Messina and Reggio. What percentage of genuine warnings can they discover among the persons who were accidentally kept away from those doomed cities?

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