But the general strike and street fighting in Eastern Berlin during March although it was intentionally exaggerated so as to impress Paris with the Bolshevist danger, did for a few days imperil not only the Scheidemann Government, but the whole Parliamentary system. Both were consequences of the coalition which by giving the Government a class basis had made it quite incapable of going halfway to meet the revolutionary demands for recognition of the Council System and for socialisation. At first, party ties had held the moderate mass of the Social-Democratic workmen; but as time passed and the middle-class mentality of the men in power became more and more marked, dissatisfaction with the Government and defections to the Opposition grew rapidly. Even _Vorwärts_ admitted there was cause of complaint.
In vain did the Government poster the streets with pathetic protests that "socialisation is already here," and issued manifestoes pointing to its legislative achievements--Eight-Hour Day, Unemployment Benefit, Land Settlement, what we should call "Whitley Councils" in coal-mining districts, War Pensions, and Repeal of War Measures. These had already been put in force provisionally by the previous Government, and did not amount to much any way. In vain did the Government profess its intention of pushing through the two Bills approving, in principle, nationalisation of coal mines and potash deposits; for no one wanted nationalisation except as a step to socialisation. The workmen felt that the Government was, as one put it to me, "a revolution profiteer." It had perverted the purposes and pocketed the profits of the revolution. They felt that Weimar, as another one expressed it, was only a "soviet of profiteers" and would produce no socialist legislation.
The revolutionary opponents of the Coalition saw their opportunity, but their leaders could secure no combination or concerted action. Nothing, indeed, was more surprising than the incapacity of the Germans to associate and organise for a political purpose.
The general impression one got was that Germany had so grown to look on political responsibility as the function of a specialised class that they never could consider anyone outside that class as capable of replacing any member of it. We see something of the same sort of helplessness growing up in England, where it is becoming increasingly difficult for the man in the street to conceive a Cabinet formed from outside a small clique of the ruling class. And the German revolutionaries of the Opposition showed themselves as incapable of making use of their opportunities as did their Liberal opponents in the Government. The game was in the revolutionaries' hands in the early months of the year if they could have combined. But the different disturbed districts declared war on the Government at just such intervals of time as allowed them to be conveniently beaten in detail by very small forces. Each district again was divided into all manner of dissentient organisations in different stages of development. In some the Councils were really representative, in others they had co-opted themselves; while there were as many kinds of revolutionary corps as of Councils.