now rendered Socialist propaganda enormously easier and more effective, in the "martyr's pose" which the Social Democrats continued to assume and to utilize for arousing the sympathies of their liberally-minded fellow-citizens, in the perfecting of the organization of the allied "Red" trade-unions,[1] and, last but not least, in the changed circumstances of German foreign politics which now rendered it possible for the party for the first time in its history to make a "patriotic" appeal to the German people.
It must be remembered that the retirement of Bismarck in 1890 marked not only the end of exceptional legislation against the Social Democrats but also a momentous revolution in the empire's foreign policy. For more than a century Russia and Prussia had lived side by side in pretty amicable relations with each other, sometimes in formal alliance; and Socialists and Radicals alike had come to look upon a Russo-German entente as a mighty prop of "Tsarism" and "barbarism" and consequently as the gravest menace to political democracy and free institutions within the German Empire. Now, in 1890, William II., to Bismarck's chagrin but to the delight of Radicals and Socialists, broke with the Tsar and held out an affectionate hand to England. And then, in 1891, when open flirtation began between the Russian autocracy and the French Republic, the Social Democrats found themselves drawn willy-nilly into sympathy with, and even support of, the Triple Alliance. For example, Georg von Vollmar, the leading Bavarian Socialist, in two remarkable speeches at Munich in the summer of 1891, declared that, although the foreign policies of 1866 and 1870 were wrong, the party should not squander its force in incessant and fruitless discussions of the past; Germany was now quite pacific, and the Triple Alliance must be defended as the best guarantee of world peace. France alone, according to Vollmar, was too chauvinistic, and it was a disgusting spectacle "to see the French Republic coquetting with Russian Tsarism and barbarism"; the French Socialists who sincerely preached peace were certainly in a small minority and were absolutely unable to influence the chauvinistic majority of Frenchmen.
In any case [said Vollmar] we can render only service to all true friends of peace in France and elsewhere by giving them to understand
- ↑ A convenient summary of the relation of the "Red" trade-unions to the Social Democratic Party is given by Professor S. P. Orth in his Socialism and Democracy in Europe (1913), pp. 171–179, as well as statistics (p. 295) gathered from Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich. Cf. Schmoele, Die Sozialdemokratischen Gewerkschaften in Deutschland seit dem Erlasse des Sozialistengesetzes (1896 et seq.).
