The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1913-06-08
'PRUsS|A|V PEOPLE
MUCH DISSATISFIED
Sentiment Toward Kaiser Is
One Calculated to Retard
Political Peace.
ELECTIONS ARE PROOF
Belief Is Held That Balloting
Is Useless Under Regula-
tions Imposed.
ELECTIONS ARE PROOF
BY FREDERICK WERNER.
Special Gable to The Tribune.


BERLIN, June lit becomes more
and more evident that if the kaiser IS
highest wish is to celebrate his jubilee
as the ruler Of happy and contented
people, he is doomed to bitter disap-
polntment. Never, not even under the
iron rule of Bismarck, have the Ger
man people been as dissatisfied with
their lot in life politically and economi-
cally as at the present, and nowhere Is
the dissatisfaction as pronounced as in
Prussia, the kingdom whose ruler the
kaiser is.
After the recent elections to the Prus-
sian landtag, which every one, includ-
ing the king of Prussia. knows are
nothing but mere farce, the grumb
ling has grown louder than ever, and
the whole press is speaking in terms Of
the utmost bitterness.
Voting Held Farce.
"Why do people have elections
every yearf asks the Berliner Tage-
blatt. Supposedly because in the
meantime things may have happened
which make it reasonable to suppose
that differences may have arisen be-
tween the citizens and the government
they have elected to carry out their
will. All states that have a representa-
tive assembly have paragraphs In their
constitutions which make elections pos
sible if it be necessary to dissolve the
legislatures before the end of the term
to appeal to the voters. There is only
one state in the world that has a con-
stitution which makes it impossible for
the voters to exert any influence upon
the government through new elections,
and that state is Prussia. Nobody has
so far been able to give satisfactory
explanation why elections are ever held
here In Russia, in Turkey, in China,
there is some sense In having elections,
imperfect though the constitutions of
these states are. In Prussia there is
no sense at all in having elections, a
fact of which the voters are well aware,
and they stay at home on election day.
Sentiment Evident.
The elections to the reichstag show
as plainly as possible what changes the
wishes of the people have undergone
have completely changed the political
complexion Of the reichstag. The con-
servative party has been almost wiped
out, and would have been wiped out
completely but for the unjust arrange
ment of the election districts.
"In the Russian diet the situation
has undergone no change whatever,
the paper says, and adds; ''In the
kingdom of Frederick the Great and
King Wilhelm now, as always, neither
the people nor the Hohenzollerns rule,
its real rulers are the great estate
owners in the most thinlv populated
parts Of the country, which pay the
smallest share Of the taxes. }, :.
The Tageblatt ends its g. accuse -
with reproach to the kaiser, who,
in 1908, as king of Prussia, prom
ised an election reform, but who has
done nothing since to keep his promise,
day Of retribution dawns, when an
abused people discovers that it was
permitted Englishmen and Russians,
Americans and Japanese to get ahead
of them in world y politics, merely to
keep in power by artificial means the
casts Of the saints and the knights,
then woe unto the sons or grandsons
who will havo to suffer for tho sins of
their ancestors!