[6] BERTRAND, _Histoire_, Vol. II, p. 552.
[7] One of the significant incidents of this election was the contest against Frère Orban, for thirty years a parliamentary leader and one of the greatest politicians of his day. His seat was contested by an obscure workingman, and the distinguished parliamentarian was compelled to submit to the ordeal of a second ballot.
[8] The Clerical forces are gradually retreating before the repeated onslaughts of Liberals and Socialists. But the loyalty to the Church remains undiminished. On May 17, 1901, a Clerical deputy remarked in the Chamber that he would like to see the temporal power of the pope restored. The Socialists immediately started an uproar which ended in their singing their "Marseillaise" and the adjournment of the sitting.
[10] _La Grève Générale Belge d'Avril_, 1902, Brussels, 1902.
[12] See DR. STEFFENS-FRAUENWEILER, _Der Agrar-Sozialismus in Belge_.
[14] See an article by E. VANDERVELDE, "_Der General Streik_," in _Archiv für Sozial-wissenschaft und Sozial-Politik_, Tübingen, May, 1908. The same article was published, same date, in _Revue du Mois_, Paris.
[16] Bakunin had a large following in Belgium during the days of the "Old International," and Anarchists have never entirely ceased their activities in the large cities.
[17] On the walls of the "Maison du Peuple" you will find noble paintings. Here labored Constantine Meunier, the sculptor, on his notable "Monument au Travail." Three remarkable sections of this monument, "La Mine," "L'Industrie," "La Glèbe," can be seen in the Gallery of Modern Art, in Brussels. There are evidences everywhere of the art interest of these alert working people. One of them, with sincere indignation, pointed out to me the large pile of stone that surmounts the heights of the city, the Palace of Justice, completed in 1883, and said its "bourgeois Babylonian hideousness is the high-water mark of bourgeois taste in art and bourgeois power in politics."
It is the constant complaint of the German Democrats that there is no Liberal Party in Germany. The wars that repeatedly devastated the country during past centuries drove property owners to seek the protection of a strong, centralized government. This habit has survived the centuries. Whenever the middle classes show signs of breaking away from the conservatism of the "Regierung," the Prince always finds a way of bringing them back. The Period of Revolution--1850--ended in a compromise that ignored the workingmen and virtually left absolutism on the throne. When the new era dawned, and Bismarck, like a young giant, shaped the highways of empire, he used the Liberals so adroitly that, when his national legerdemain was accomplished, they were a broken and impotent faction, lost in the conservative reaction of the hour.