Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 270, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1912 — GERMAN SOCIALISTS GAINING [ARTICLE]

GERMAN SOCIALISTS GAINING

Result of Chemnitz Convention Gives Rude Awakening to ths Conservatives. Berlin. —The result of the Socialists convention at Chemnitz gave a rude awakening to German conservatives who had maintained that the Socialist party was hot dangerous in spite of its great numbers, because it was and would remain a minority in the German nation. 1 The convention not only did much to unite the party, but also, by failing to condemn the alliance with the radical party for the reballotings in the recent elections, left open the door for co-operations with Nonsocialist parties in coming elections. Socialists with progressive allies may become strong enough to control the German parliament, though they themselves may never emerge from the minority. 4 A break with the old autocratic system of party control under which the party affairs were in the hands of

a committee of nine men waß mads when the convention decided to elect an advisory committee of thirty-si* members, one from each of the .districts in which the Socialists divids the empire for administrative purposes. Only one decision of the Chemnitz convention brought down general adverse criticism from the Nonsocialists and from a respectable minority of the Socialists themselves. This was the exclusion from the party of Gerhard Hildebrand, a scholarly man who has won considerable fame by his writings on socialistic and economic subjects. His offending consisted in advocating an eventual federation of all European states, with a protective tariff and adequate colonies, both of which are taboo to the orthodox Socialists.