measure of protection". Ambiguities were deemed preferable to party splits. Even "principles" must not be exalted above the requirements of vote-getting.
So chastening was the effect of the elections of 1907 upon the German Social Democracy that Bebel himself became something of a champion of the government in spite of its high-handed methods of combating his party. On the very morrow of the elections Bebel declared at the International Congress of Stuttgart that
affairs are no longer in such shape that the threads of a war catastrophe are hidden to educated and observing students of politics. Closet diplomacy has ceased to be. … The war party, to be sure, is small with us Germans and has no adherents in governmental circles. … In the ruling classes of Germany nobody wants war, partly out of regard for the existence of the Socialist movement. Prince Bülow himself conceded to me that the authorities know what great dangers for government and society lie in a European war, and therefore would avoid it if possible.[1]
Another effect of the elections of 1907 upon the German Social Democracy was to settle beyond doubt the much-mooted question of co-operation with bourgeois parties in electoral campaigns. Bernstein had advocated such a policy as early as 1893,[2] but it had been condemned by the Cologne Congress in that year. It had been debated, with special reference to the curious three-class electoral system in Prussia, at the Hamburg Congress of 1897 and at the Stuttgart Congress of 1898, but without decisive results. At the Hanover Congress of 1899, largely under Revisionist influence, the following resolution was adopted:
In order to reach its goal, the party utilizes every means which, in harmony with its fundamental principles, promises it success. Without entertaining any illusions concerning the character and methods of bourgeois parties, representatives and defenders of the existing political and social order, it does not refuse in a given instance to co-operate with certain of them whenever it is a question of strengthening the party at elections, of extending the political rights and liberties of the people, of ameliorating in a serious way the social condition of the working class, of favoring the accomplishment of the duties of civilization, or of combating projects hostile to the working class and the people. But the party guards above all, in its activity, its complete autonomy and independence and considers each success which it achieves only as a step which brings it nearer its ultimate goal.[3]
Next year the Mainz Congress applied this general principle specifically to the impending Prussian elections:
