The New German Constitution

Walter James Shepard

American Political Science Review, 1920, vol. 14, issue 1, 34-52

Abstract: To understand the real nature of the government which now, under its new constitution, is attempting to guide the German nation through the perils of reconstruction is indeed a baffling problem. We are as yet too close to the events which brought it into existence and clothed it with constitutional forms to attempt their evaluation or to determine their significance. The revolution was so unlike what we should have expected as necessary to shift the ultimate power in the state from a narrow military and landed oligarchy to the masses of the people, that a doubt forces itself upon us as to its genuineness. The war, with its shattering of national ideals, its appalling toll of life, the grinding misery which it imposed, and the insuperable financial bondage to which it condemned the nation for an indefinite future, might account for a thorough popular disillusionment which would sweep the nation into the current of democracy. But if this were the case, we would expect a general enthusiasm for the new government, an evident popular sense of the passing of the dark night of autocratic rule and a joy in the light of a new and happier day.This is exactly what does not exist. There are three classes in Germany today. The first, who constitute only a small minority, are the nationalists and militarists who are bitterly opposed to the republic, and even now are agitating at every favorable opportunity for the restoration of the monarchy in its old form. The second class are likewise a comparatively small minority. They are the revolutionaries, the Spartacists with some of the Independent Socialists, who are just as strongly opposed to the government, using wherever possible the instruments of direct action to inaugurate the revolution which they believe has not yet been achieved. The vast mass of the nation appear to be utterly indifferent with respect to forms of government.

Date: 1920
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