despite the moderation of these demands, the strike split the SPD from its bourgeois friends in the Reichstag majority. With the Vaterlandspartei baying from the right, the Catholic Centre Party and the Liberals could ill afford to associate too closely with the ‘disloyal’ Socialists. Just as the negotiations at Brest reached their most critical point, just as President Wilson was demanding to know who spoke for Germany, the progressive Reichstag coalition was in disarray.
