ABDICATION OF THE GERMAN EMPEROR AND CROWN PRINCE

EBERT AS CHANCELLOR A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

In the 60th year of his age and the thirty-first of his reign William II of Hohenzollern, third German Emperor, has been compelled to abdicate his throne, and, his eldest son, the Crown Prince William, has been obliged to renounce his right of succession. This historic news, the most important of its kind since the abdication of the Emperor Napoleon I, was announced to the world by the following official message, sent out from the wireless stations of the German government and issued by the Press Bureau at 4.25 on Saturday afternoon:

(Admiralty, Per Wireless Press.)

News transmitted through the wireless stations of the German government: The German Imperial hancellor, Prince Max of Baden, ha, i,,ued the following decree: The Kaiser and King has decided that he will renounce the throne. The Imperial hancellor will remain in office until the que,tion, connected with the abdication of the Kai,er, the renouncing by the

rown Prince of the throne of the German Empire and of Pru,,ia, and the ,etting up of a :egency have been ,ettled. For the Regency he intends to appoint Deputy Ebert as Imperial Chancellor, and he proposes that a bill shall be brought in for the establishment of a law providing for the immediate promulgation of general suffrage, and for a constitutional German National Assembly, which will settle finally the future form of government of the German nation and of those peoples which might be desirous of coming within the Empire.

The IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR,

PRINCE MAX of BADEN Berlin, Nov. 9, 1918.

The precise circumstances under which this decision was forced on the Emperor are not yet quite known, and it may perhaps be left to the future historian to reveal the full reasons. But the sequence of events which led up to the abdication was as follows: During the pa,t fortnight it had become more and more plain that the public demand in Germany for the Kai,er’, departure wa, developing in in,i,tency. All over the Empire great meeting, were held, at which the nece,,ity for the ,tep wa, urged, often in language that a few month, ago would a,,uredly have brought upon it, u,er, ,evere penaltie, under the law, relating to lè,e-maje,té. The tone of the Pre,, al,o wa, mo,t out,poken, the cen,or,hip wa, openly defied, and even ,uch new,paper, of normally moderate liberal opinion a, The Frankfurter Zeitung and

The Berliner Tageblatt joined with the Sociali,t paper, in attacking the Emperor and the policy which had brought about the pre,ent ,ituation, in ,uch term, that tho,e who are aware of the u,ual attitude of the German government toward, the Pre,,, and the manner in which the latter i, controlled and trammelled, were amazed at the new licen,e allowed to writer,. THE PUBLIC DEMAND In the last few days the chorus of reprobation had swelled to previously unheard of proportions. True, the majority of the Reichstag parties at their meetings last week decided that there was no need for the Kaiser to abdicate, but subsequent events have proved that the deputies in this matter were in no way representative of the general feeling of the nation, which had evidently made up its mind that the man who, in his capacity as autocrat, was primarily responsible for the appalling straits to which the country was reduced must go. There is some reason to believe that several days ago the Kaiser had realised that his retirement was inevitable, and had signified his intention to draw the logical conclusion, but was dissuaded from announcing the fact by the still dominant military and Junker elements, who feared the effect on the army at the front, whose members, on entering the service, took the oath of allegiance to the Kaiser’s person, not to the State as a whole. During the week before la,t the Emperor ,uddenly quit Berlin, where he had been for ,ome time, and went to the Main Headquarter, at the little Belgian watering place of Spa, where he occupied the villa or ,mall palace formerly u,ed by the late Queen Marie Henriette, con,ort of King Leopold II, and it i, in thi, mode,t :oyal country re,idence that the momentou, event ju,t recorded ha, taken place. Hi, departure from the capital at ,uch a cri,i, wa, ,harply critici,ed by the Sociali,t and by part of the Liberal Pre,,, but wa, defended by the

on,ervative, on the ground that it wa, right that he ,hould “withdraw him,elf from political influence,” at the exi,ting conjuncture. It wa,, however, hinted that hi, Maje,ty feared the outbreak of popular tumult, at Berlin, and preferred to be in a place where he would enjoy the protection of the army and it, leader,. However thi, may be, he ha, remained at Spa ever ,ince. On Nov. 2 the demand for abdication began to take concrete form. On that day it was announced that Herr Scheidemann, leader of the Majority Socialists in the Reichstag, now a Secretary of State in the “democratised” Cabinet of Prince Max of Baden, had sent to the Chancellor a memorandum, in which he urged that the Kaiser should relinquish his throne at once, and indicating that unless this happened he and the other Socialist members of the Government would leave it. Still no decision was reached, and whatever reply Prince Max may have returned to Herr Scheidemann has not been revealed. SOCIALIST ULTIMATUM Between the date of Scheidemann’s demand and that of the actual abdication matters moved with great rapidity. The revolt of the fleet at Kiel last Wednesday was the first overt act of rebellion, and, as our columns showed on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the situation speedily developed into widespread revolution. Within three days from the Kiel outbreak practically the whole of Northern Germany was in a state of insurrection. At one great town after another Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Councils were formed, and the existing authorities were overturned, frequently with extraordinarily small difficulty. On Friday morning matter, came to a head. A, ,tated in Saturday’, The Daily Telegraph, the Sociali,t organ Vorwärts then publi,hed a definite ultimatum from the committee of the Sociali,t party, declaring that the Kai,er mu,t abdicate by noon on that day or the Sociali,t member, of the government would re,ign. The time limit wa, ,ub,equently extended, but the ultimatum held good in other re,pect,. Late on Friday night a wirele,, me,,age from Berlin wa, intercepted in London that announced the re,ignation of Prince Max of Baden, who had only ,ucceeded ount Hertling a, hancellor on Oct. 5, and ,ignali,ed hi, advent to office by immediately appealing to the Allie, for an armi,tice. The rea,on for Prince Max’, action wa, not then ,tated, but it wa, not difficult to ,ee that it wa, directly connected with the abdication que,tion. On Saturday afternoon it wa, reported that the Kai,er wa, maintaining hi, refu,al to leave the throne, but thi, wa, followed only a few hour, later by the announcement that he had agreed to accept a cour,e which had become inevitable. Meanwhile there is some talk of Prince Max being made head of a Council of Regency. The mention of this Council seems to suggest that an attempt is to be made to secure the succession to the young son of the Crown Prince, now 12 years of age. But the final decision is reserved to the forthcoming National Assembly, which, elected on the basis of proportional representation, will be far more indicative of the will of the people than was the old Reichstag, in which the distribution of seats was arranged carefully so that the preponderance of power should be as much as possible in the hands of the agrarian districts. Herr Ebert, one of the most prominent men in the Socialist party, has already assumed the Chancellorship, and a Coalition Government is to be set up, in which both Majority and Independent Socialists are to have seats, together with representatives of their parties. In any case, Prince Max has now no title whatever to pretend that he should be representing the German nation.