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evils. What, actually, had happened was that the popular toleranceof poverty and crises was gone.Ortega is not talking about that kind of proletarian revolt whichflamed up so many times in Europe under the pressure of unendurableoppressions. The common people had risen in Englandunder Cromwell, the Russian serfs had poured into the streetsunder Catherine II as well as Nicholas to be mowed down by grapeshot.The populace of Paris had stormed palace and barricade notonly under Louis XVI but in the days of the Commune. In everycountry and in every age the masses, goaded to desperation, haveon occasion rushed upon their oppressors. But this revolt of whichOrtega speaks was of a different nature. It was a state of mindthat did not necessarily involve force. It was a repudiation of ageoldassumption, a new conviction of right and of power. And ittook the form not of violent insurrection against the government,but of relentless demands upon the government.The most powerful organized agency of this revolt was theSocialist party. Germany more than any other country became thecenter of radical economic explorations and propaganda. Its philosophypermeated the labor movement'and percolated into the thinkingof all political parties. Grave questionings of the assumed permanenceof the capitalist system had gotten about. While the socialistsoffered their own substitute system, every variety of reformer appearedwith all sorts of proposals for the repair of the capitalistsociety itself. The influence of the old Junker groups waned. Thesocialists had more than a hundred members of the Reichstag inthe year when war was declared. But equally important was thechange that had come over the composition of the non-socialistmembers of that body. Jules Cambon, French Ambassador to Berlinin 1913, warning France of the state of affairs in Germany, wrote:"In the Reichstag for 1878 out of 397 members, 162 belonged to thearistocracy; in 1898, 83; in 1912, 57. Out of this number 27 alonebelong to the Right, 14 to the Center, 7 to the Left, and one sitswith the Socialists."As the shadows of the coming war of 1914 lengthened overEurope, Germany was feeling the effect of one of those economicdepressions which then darkened the skies of all Europe and85