they were again solvent enough to do.

The C.D.U.'s effort to bridge thepolitical gap between Protestants andCatholics seems to be failing. The FreeDemocratic advance was one symptom.In North Rhine- Westphalia , in theBritish Zone , where Catholics outnum-ber Protestants three to two, the Chris-tian Democrats won. In Lower Saxony ,also in the British Zone , where Protes­ tants outnumber Catholics four to one,the Social Democrats ran far ahead. Ina strongly Protestant region, the righttends to take shape independently ofthe C.D.U.

The C.D.U. has begun to dependmore and more on the local Catholic clergy to offset the far more efficientpolitical machine of the Social Demo­ crats , the best in Germany . What thismeans in terms of practical politics canbe illustrated by the recent election inCologne, a Catholic stronghold, wherethe votes of men and women werecounted separately. The women gave78,494 votes to the Christian Demo-crats and 48,924 to the Social Demo­ crats ; the men 48,881 and 48,640 re-spectively. The C.D.U. majority wasmade up of 29,570 women and only 241men an indication that women aremore likely to vote as the church wantsthem to.

It is significant that the most prom-inent leader of the left- wing ChristianDemocrats, Dr. Karl Arnold , a formertrade- union official now Minister- Pres­ ident of North Rhine- Westphalia , andPresident of the Bundesrat, has beenfar more critical of Dr. Adenauer 's pol-icy since the election than before. First,Arnold publicly expressed the desire tosee Social Democrats in the Govern-ment. Then, at the annual Catholic congress on social problems, at Bochum in September, he warned sharplyagainst" a bourgeois, anti- socialisticcomplex." In North Rhine- Westphalia ,the most important state of west Ger­ many , the tension between the Ruhr industrialists who supply C.D.U. fundsand the Catholic workers who provideC.D.U. votes is most extreme.

The C.D.U. in the Government isreally a coalition within a coalition.The Bavarian fraction of the C.D.U.delegation is even separately organized.Dr. Adenauer 's government has to rec-oncile so many different interests thatit is likely to break down for internalrather than external reasons.

Theodor Heuss

Social Democrats. The rising indexof production is one side of the German economic picture. A total of one and ahalf million unemployed- and an aver-age weekly wage barely on the level ofsubsistence- is the other. The reservoirof political discontent still stands at arelatively high point, but discontent isfar from desperate. Most of the dis-satisfied voters backed the Social Dem­ ocrats , the most disciplined expressionof opposition. And the Social Demo­ crats themselves lost ground. Theycame out of the election with almostseven million votes, or close to thirtyper cent of the total, a decline of overfiveper cent in the past two years, justabout equal to the drop in C.D.U.

votes.

The Christian Democrats and SocialDemocrats are almost evenly matchedin numbers, but the former has alliesand the latter none- at any rate, on anational scale. In a sense there areonly two parties, the Social Democratsand all the rest. As long as the economicclimate favors free enterprise, the So­ cial Democrats have to choose betweenisolation and compromise on principle.On the one hand, they bear the bruntof Communist propaganda. On theother hand, in such places as Hamburg,where they are in power, the bourgeoisparties form a coalition against themon the ground that they are" as bad asCommunists ."

To make matters worse, the German Social Democrats are also cut off fromtheir natural allies on the continent.They disagree with the French Social-ists on the Saar question and the Ruhr statute. By pushing the dismantling ofGerman factories, Ernest Bevin proba-

bly cost the Social Democrats a goodmany votes. The other German partiessuggested that dismantling was con-nected with Socialism , and that provedto be an effective campaign device.

Dr. Kurt Schumacher , the leader ofthe Social Democrats , is perfectly con-tent to have his party remain, for thetime being, out of the government. TheWeimar Social Democrats wanted toget in, if they possibly could. Their em-phasis was on Ministers and Members of Parliament , not the party. Schu­ macher puts the party first. He controlsMinisters from his headquarters inHannover . He thinks that the partywould suffer if it took power prema-turely or shared it disadvantageously.In Berlin, it won the last municipalelection, took control of the westernsectors, and has been losing popularsupport ever since. In some of the west-ern states, the party has had to criticizethe policy of coalition governments asif Social Democratic Ministers werenot part of them. Dr. Schumacher 'spolicy is that the party must win amajority and take all power or none.

Communists. The German Commu­ nists were surprised by their very poorshowing, but they did not need theelection to tell them that they were notdoing well in the west. They had tacit-ly admitted that, before the balloting,by trotting out the National Front,their third important tactical devicesince the end of the war.

The first was the Socialist UnityParty, which was successful in swallow-ing up the Social Democratic Party inthe Russian Zone, but failed to pene-trate into the western zones, or to sink

The Reporter, October 11, 1949