THE   WAR   OF   I939~
(whom he appointed), and the Bundesrat (the upper
house of the legislature, whose members were nomi-
nated by the rulers of the twenty-five states that
constituted the federal Reich). And the Bundesrat
itself was dominated by the Prussian delegates
appointed by the Kaiser as King of Prussia. Even
before the war the Social Democratic Party, strongly
represented in the vocal but not instrumental
Reichstag, had been demanding ministerial responsi-
bility, franchise reform, secret ballot, female suffrage,
as well as economic innovations of a Communistic
type. The alarming growth of Social Democracy
had been, indeed, probably one of the causes that
had led the Imperial Government to seek the dis-
traction of war. At any rate, the war put a stop
for a time to political agitation, and so long as the
war went well the whole German nation—save for
a small Communistic faction led by Karl Liebknecht
and Rosa Luxemburg—rallied to the call of the
Kaiser. But as the shadow of impending defeat
darkened the horizon, and as the Allied blockade
brought privation and misery to the disillusioned
masses, the demand for a change of government
was again raised with clamorous insistence. In par-
ticular, the conscripts driven to fruitless slaughter
on the Western front, and the seamen sent to almost
certain death in submarines, cried aloud for peace—
peace at any price—a peace which the Allies declined
to concede to the Kaiser and his satellites except on
g.a.—17	257