The tenth Annual Congress of the Agrarian League was opened
in Berlin on Monday. Addressing an audience of some eight thousand agriculturists drawn from all quarters of the Empire, the President, Baron von Wangenheim, vigorously attacked the new Tariff as opposed to the interests of the great middle class, "which was far more important than the working classes." He defined their attitude towards the Monarchy, the true foundation of national greatness, by saying that they did not desire a Monarchy which was a shadow, as in England, or a despotism with all its corruption, as in Russia, nor did they like Republics with their "rotten governments by cliques." They desired "to serve our Emperor, not as slaves, but as free German men like our fore- fathers." He further contended that the middle class as he had defined it—i.e., those who were bound by tradition to th'e Soil or to the homes of their fathers—formed an impregnable rampart for their Monarch, their religion, and the whole of their State system against the revolutionary elements. Dr. Hahn, the secretary of the League, was even more aggressive in his attack on the Tariff, the Reichstag, Count von Billow and his Ministers, whom he described as "expert causeurs, great in flattery and in saying agreeable things to all political parties, including even the Social Democrats." He also accused them of paying amiable attentions to foreign countries, and con- ducting German policy into blind alleys all over the globe, whence it could only be extricated by endless labour and trouble.
