Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/715

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KAPP—KAROLYI
675

History. Kansas has been overwhelmingly Republican in politics and there has been practically no Democratic press in the state. W. R. Stubbs was elected governor in 1909 and re- elected in 191 1, as representative of the reform wing of the Republican party. Under the leadership of William Allen White, Victor Murdock and Henry J. Allen, the reform wing of the party joined the Progressive movement and the primaries in Aug. 1912 declared for Roosevelt for presidential nominee. The division in the Republican ranks resulted in giving the eleotoral vote of the state that year to Wilson and in the election of a Democratic governor, George H. Hodges. In 1914 the Repub- licans regained control of the state Government by the election as governor of Arthur Capper, owner of the Topeka Capital and of a group of farm papers, and he was reelected in 1916, although the electoral vote of the state again went to Wilson. Henry J. Allen, Republican, owner of the Wichita Beacon, was elected governor in 1918 and reelected in 1920. In the latter year the electoral vote for President went to Harding by enor- mous majorities. The World War was enthusiastically supported by all parties. One of the larger training camps, named from Gen. F. Funston (who died early in 1917), was located on land adjoining the Fort Riley military reservation. The state supplied 63,428 men to the rank and file of the army. The amounts sub- scribed to the war loans were: First Liberty Loan, $11,108,750; Second, $27,895,200; Third, $47,381,200; Fourth, $73,914,550; Victory Loan, $51,208,250.

Slate Documents. Session laws and Senate and House journals are issued after each legislative session. The last edition of the Compiled Statutes was issued in 1915. A complete revision was in preparation in 1921. Reports of executive departments are brought together in a collective volume entitled Combined Department Re- ports. Other important publications are the Biennial Reports of the State Board of Agriculture and the State Board of Health and the Collections of the State Historical Society. The State Library issued in 1920 a reprint of the Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of 1859, with much supplementary historical matter, edited by H. G. Larimer. (F. H. H.*)

KAPP, WOLFGANG (1868- ), German conspirator, the author or chief instrument of what is known as the Kapp coup d'etat (or Putsch) of March 13 1920, was born in New York July 28 1868. He was the son of one of the leading German Liberals of 1848, Friedrich Kapp, who, when the reaction triumphed, had sought refuge in America and remained there until the establishment of the German Empire by Bismarck in 1871. Friedrich wrote books which had a considerable vogue on the history of German immigration into the United States and on the question of slavery. He returned to Germany and was a National Liberal member of the Reichstag until he sep- arated from Bismarck on the question of protection. His son Wolfgang grew up under Bismarckian influences, and after an ordinary official career became the founder of the Agricultural Credit Institute in East Prussia, which achieved great success in promoting the prosperity of landowners and farmers in that province. He was consequently in close touch with the Junkers of East Prussia, and during the World War made himself their mouthpiece in an attack on the Imperial Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg published in 1916 under the title of Die Nationalen Kreise und, der Reichskanzler. This pamphlet appeared about the same time as the attacks of " Junius Alter " and evoked an indignant reply from Bethmann Hollweg in the Reichstag, in which he spoke of " loathsome abuse and slanders." Kapp continued his campaign against the Government, and was one of the chief founders of the Vaterlandspartei under the auspices of Tirpitz. For a brief period before the Revolution he was a Conservative member of the Reichstag.

Nothing more was heard of him until on March 12 1920 the Republican Government of the Reich suddenly issued an order for his arrest. It turned out that he had organized, with Gen. von Liittwitz and other officers, a conspiracy to seize power in Berlin and to* occupy the Government offices. Noske, the Socialist Minister of National Defence, had, with misplaced confidence, put Liittwitz at the head of the troops which suppressed the Communist risings in Berlin. Liittwitz, after delivering a kind of ultimatum to the Government, placed himself at the disposal^ of Kapp, and led the troops, which consisted mainly of the so- called " Baltikum " and other Free Corps, from the camp of Doberitz near Berlin into the capital in the early morning of March 13, where he occupied the Government buildings. Kapp was installed in the Imperial Chancellery and issued proclama- tions with his signature as " Chancellor of the Reich." President Ebert, Chancellor Bauer, and other members of the Ministry fled in motor-cars first to Dresden and afterwards to Stuttgart, where a meeting of as many members of the Reichstag as could be assembled took place. Meanwhile Kapp tried to form a Government, with a number of desperate and in part criminal characters in the subordinate offices. Well-known Conserva- tives and former secretaries of state, who were invited to assume the more important offices, declined to associate them- selves with him. He endeavoured to negotiate with ministers who remained in Berlin, particularly with Schiffer, Minister of Justice. The chief grievances which Kapp and his followers professed to have against the Government were (a) that the National Assembly, which had been elected as a Constituent Assembly, was prolonging its existence and acting as a perma- nent Reichstag; (b) that this Assembly was manifesting an in- clination to revise the constitution in respect of the election of the President of the Republic so as to make the election lie with the Reichstag instead of with the electorate of the country. There was something in these complaints, and in the sequel the date of the general election for the first republican Reichstag was hastened and was fixed for the following June, while all attempts to change the method of election for the presidency of the repub- lic were abandoned.

The Government had no troops whom it could trust to put down the Kapp insurrection, but the working classes of Berlin took the matter into their own hands, and by a universal strike rendered the continuance of the Kapp " Government " impossible. The leading generals of the army, with the exception of Luden- dorff, had at the same time informed Liittwitz that his position and action were entirely irregular and that he must resign in the interests of the country. Kapp saw that the game was up, and on the evening of March 17 he and Liittwitz fled from Berlin in motor-cars. The insurrectionary Government had lasted four days. The legitimate Government on its return to Berlin issued warrants for the arrest of Kapp, Liittwitz and their associates. Liittwitz entirely disappeared, but Kapp remained in hiding for a time on his East Prussian estates, and ultimately managed to escape by aeroplane to Sweden.

The effects of the Kapp coup throughout Germany were more lasting than in Berlin. On the one hand it led to a succession of Communist insurrections, of which the most serious was that which was suppressed by reactionary troops and with reactionary severity in the Ruhr region, March-April 1920. On the other hand it left a rump of military conspirators such as Col. Bauer, Maj. Pabst and Capt. Ehrhardt, who found refuge in Bavarin under the reactionary Government of Herr von Kahr (itself ap indirect product of the Kapp coup) and there attempted to organize plots against the republican Constitution and Govern- ment of Germany. The crisis in the relations of Bavaria with the Reich (Aug.-Sept. 1921) which ended in von Kahr's resigna- tion was a further phase of the same trouble.

KAROLYI, MICHAEL, COUNT (1875- ), Hungarian poli- tician, was born on March 4 1875. He was at first an agrarian Conservative, and as such president of the Hungarian Agricultural Union, and then, as deputy, an adherent of the extreme Chauvinist party. He became the leader of the Radical wing of the Independence party (see HUNGARY), a personal opponent of Count Stephen Tisza, and led the parliamentary opposition and obstruction against him. In the spring of 1914 he travelled to America to collect among Hungarians resident there election funds for his party. The outbreak of war found him in France, where his companions were interned, but he was allowed to go free, and returned to Hungary. He entered the army as a volun- teer. On the approach of the catastrophe he allied himself and his party with the anti-Chauvinist Bourgeois-Radicals and the Social Democrats, developed pacifist views, and sought to bring