And the Kaiser abdicates Part 16

"Come on!" cried the leaders of the demonstration. "They won't shoot their comrades!"

But the _Franzer_ had not yet been "enlightened." A rattling volley rang out and the deserters, stragglers and furloughed paraders fled. Fifteen of them lay dead in the street and one young woman aboard a pa.s.sing street car was also killed.

The incident aroused deep indignation not only among the Spartacans, but among the Independent Socialists as well. The bulk of the Independents were naturally excited over the killing of "comrades," and the leaders saw in it a welcome opportunity further to shake the authority of the Majority Socialist members of the government. Even the _Vorwarts_, hesitating between love and duty, apologetically demanded an investigation. The government eventually shook off all responsibility and it was placed on the shoulders of an over-zealous officer acting without instructions. This may have been--indeed, probably was--the case. The cabinet's record up to this time makes it highly improbable that any of its members had yet begun to understand that there are limits beyond which no government can with impunity permit its authority to be flouted.

The day following the shooting saw the first of those demonstrations that later became so common. Liebknecht summoned a meeting in the Siegesallee in the Tiergarten. Surrounded by motor-trucks carrying machine-guns manned by surly ruffians, he addressed the a.s.sembled thousands, attacking the government, demanding its forcible overthrow and summoning his hearers to organize a Red Guard.

It is significant that, although actual adherents of Spartacus in Berlin could at this time be numbered in thousands, tens of thousands attended the meeting. Between the Spartacans and thousands of Independent Socialists of the rank and file there were already only tenuous dividing lines.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Majority Socialists in Control.

The Independent Socialist trio in the cabinet had been compelled to give up--at least outwardly--their opposition to the summoning of a national a.s.sembly. Popular sentiment too plainly demanded such a congress to make it possible to resist the demand. Also the Majority members of the cabinet had been strengthened by two occurrences early in December.

Joffe, the former Russian Bolshevik amba.s.sador, had published his charges against Haase, Barth and Cohn, and, although these were merely a confirmation of what was generally suspected or even definitely known by many, they had an ugly look in the black and white of a printed page and found a temporary reaction which visibly shook the authority of these men who had accepted foreign funds to overthrow their government.

The other factor strengthening the hands of Ebert, Scheidemann and Landsberg was the manner of the return of the German front-soldiers.

Gratifying reports had come of the conduct of these men on their homeward march. Where the soldiers of the _etappe_ had thrown discipline and honor to the winds and straggled home, a chaotic collection of looters, the men who, until noon on November 11th, had kept up the unequal struggle against victorious armies, brought back with them some of the spirit that kept them at their hopeless posts. They marched in good order, singing the old songs, and scores of reports came of rough treatment meted out by them to misguided _Genossen_ who tried to compel them to subst.i.tute the red flag for their national or state flags, or for their regimental banners.

The first returning soldiers poured through the Brandenburger Tor on December 10th. A victorious army could not have comported itself differently. The imperial black-white-red, the black-and-white of Prussia, the white-and-blue of Bavaria and the flags of other states floated from the ranks of the veterans. Flowers decked their helmets.

Flowers and evergreens covered gun-carriages and caissons, flowers peeped from the muzzles of the rifles. Women, children and old men trudged alongside, cheering, laughing, weeping. Time was for the moment rolled back. It was not December, 1918, but August, 1914.

The people greeted the troops as if they were a conquering army. They jammed the broad Unter den Linden; cheering and handclapping were almost continuous. The red flags had disappeared from the buildings along the street and been replaced by the imperial or Prussian colors. Only the _Kultusministerium_, presided over by Adolph Hoffmann, illiterate director of schools and atheistic master of churches, stayed red. The flag of revolution floated over it and a huge red carpet hung challengingly from a second-story window.

It was evident on this first day, as also on the following days, that red doctrines had not yet destroyed discipline and order. The men marched with the cadenced step of veterans, their ranks were correctly aligned, their rifles snapped from hand to shoulder at the command of their officers. The bands blared national songs as the long lines of field-gray troops defiled through the central arch of the great gate, once sacredly reserved for the royal family.

A hush fell on the waiting crowds. The soldiers' helmets came off. A ma.s.sed band played softly and a chorus of school-children sang the old German anthem:

_Wie sie so sanft ruh'n, Alle die Seligen, In ihren Grabern._

Ebert delivered the address of welcome, which was followed by three cheers for "the German Republic." It was no time for cheers for the "German Socialist Republic." The soldiers had not yet been "enlightened."

The scenes of this first day were repeated on each day of the week. The self-respecting, sound att.i.tude of the front-soldiers angered the Spartacans and Independents, but was hailed with delight by the great majority of the people. The _Vollzugsrat_, resenting the fact that it had not been asked, as the real governing body of Germany, to take part officially in welcoming the soldiers, sent one of its members to deliver an address of welcome. He had hardly started when bands began to play, officers shouted out commands, the men's rifles sprang to their shoulders and they marched away, leaving him talking to an empty square.

The six-man cabinet announced that a national a.s.sembly would be convened. The date tentatively fixed for the elections was February 2d, which was a compromise, for the Majority Socialists wanted an earlier date, while the Independent trio desired April. It was announced also that a central congress of all Germany's workmen's and soldiers'

councils had been summoned to meet in Berlin on December 16th. This congress was to have power to fix the date for the national a.s.sembly and to make the necessary preparations.

No definite rules were laid down covering the manner of choosing delegates to the congress. Despite the consequent possibility that the elections of delegates would be manipulated by the less scrupulous Spartacans and Independents, the congress chosen was a remarkably representative body. The numerical weakness of the two radical wings of Socialism found striking ill.u.s.tration in the makeup of the congress. Of its total members.h.i.+p of some four hundred and fifty, the Spartacans and Independents together had only about forty delegates. That this accurately represented the proportionate strengths of the conservative and the radical camps was proved at the elections for the national a.s.sembly a month later, when the Independents, with four per cent of the total popular vote, again had one-eleventh of the Majority Socialists'

forty-four per cent. In considering the role played by the radicals in the second phase of the revolution it must be remembered that the majority of their strength lay in Berlin, where they eventually won a greater following than that of the old party. If Berlin and the free cities of Hamburg and Bremen could have been isolated from the empire and allowed to go their own way, ordered government in Germany would have come months sooner.[56]

[56] It is not merely in very recent times that the largest cities have become the strongholds of radicalism. In a session of the Prussian Diet on March 20, 1852, a deputy charged the government with lack of confidence in the people.

Bismarck replied: "The deputy having declared here that the government distrusts the people, I can say to him that it is true that I distrust the inhabitants of the larger cities so long as they let themselves be led by self-seeking and lying demagogues, but that I do not find the real people there. If the larger cities rise up again in rebellion, the real people will have ways of bringing them to obedience, even if these must include wiping them off the face of the earth."

The following account of the sessions of the central congress is copied from the author's diary of those days. There is nothing to add to or take from the estimates and comments set down at that time.

"December 16th. The Central Congress of Germany's Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils convened today in the _Abgeordnetenhaus_ (Prussian Diet). There are about four hundred and fifty delegates present, including two women. There is a fair sprinkling of intelligent faces in the crowd, and the average of intelligence and manners is far above that of the Berlin Soldiers' Council. None of the delegates keeps his hat on in the chamber and a few who have started smoking throw their cigars and cigarettes away at the request of the presiding officer, Leinert from Hanover, who was for some years a member of the Prussian Diet and is a man of ability and some parliamentary training.

"After organization, which is effected with a show of parliamentary form, Richard Muller, chairman of the executive committee of the _Vollzugsrat_, mounts the speaker's tribune to give an extended report of the committee's activities. The report, which turns out to be really a defense of the committee, gets a cool reception. The _Vollzugsrat_ has drifted steadily to the left ever since it was appointed, and is strongly Independent Socialist and Spartacan, and it is already evident that the Majority Socialists have an overwhelming majority in the Congress.

"Chairman Leinert interrupts Muller's speech with an announcement that a _Genosse_ has an important communication to make. A man who declares that he speaks 'in the name of at least 250,000 of Berlin's proletariat, now a.s.sembled before this building,' reads a series of demands. The first, calling for the strengthening of the socialist republic, is greeted with general applause, but then come the familiar Spartacan (Bolshevik) demands for the disarming of the _bourgeoisie_, weaponing of 'the revolutionary proletariat,' formation of a Red Guard (loud cries of 'No!'), and 'all power to remain in the hands of the workmen's and soldiers' councils.' In other words, the Russian Soviet republic.

"A half dozen officer-delegates present join in the protests against the demands. Loud cries of '_raus die Offiziere!_' (out with the officers!) come from a little group of Spartacans and Independent Socialists at the right of the room. Order is finally restored and Muller completes his defense of the _Vollzugsrat_.

"A delegate moves that 'Comrades Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg be invited to attend the session as guests with advisory powers, in view of their great services to the revolution.'[57] The motion is voted down, five to one. It is renewed in the afternoon, but meets the same fate, after a turbulent scene in which the Spartacans and their Independent Socialist allies howl and shout insults at the top of their voices.

[57] Neither Liebknecht nor Luxemburg had been chosen as delegate, although desperate efforts were made to have them elected.

"Liebknecht, who has entered the building while this was going on, addresses his followers in the street in front from the ledge of a third-story window. The '250,000 of Berlin's proletariat' prove to be about seven thousand, nearly half of them women and girls and a great majority of the rest down-at-the-heels youths. His speech is the usual Bolshevik rodomontade. A middle-aged workman who leaves the crowd with me tells me:

"'Two-thirds of the people there are there because they have to come or lose their jobs. One has to eat, you know.'

"I learned later in the day that many of the paraders had been induced to attend by the representation that it was to be a demonstration in favor of the national a.s.sembly. It is also a.s.serted that others were forced by Spartacans with drawn revolvers to leave their factories.

"December 17th. The second day's session of the Congress was marked by a virulent attack on Ebert by Ledebour, between whom and Liebknecht there is little difference. The reception of his speech by the delegates again demonstrated that the Majority Socialists make up nine-tenths of the a.s.sembly. Barth also took it upon himself to attack Ebert and to disclose secrets of the inner workings of the cabinet. Ebert answered with an indignant protest against being thus attacked from the rear. Barth has the lowest mentality of all the six cabinet members, and I am informed on good authority that he has an unsavory record. His alleged offenses are of a nature regarded by advanced penologists as pathological rather than criminal, but however that may be, he seems hardly fitted for partic.i.p.ation in any governing body.

"Liebknecht's followers staged another demonstration like that of yesterday. The Congress had decided that no outsiders should be permitted again to interrupt the proceedings, but a delegation of some forty men and women from the Schwarzkopff, Knorr and other red factories, bearing banners inscribed with Bolshevik demands, insisted on entering and n.o.body dared oppose them. They filed onto the platform and read their stock resolutions, cheered by the little group of their soul-brothers among the deputies and by fanatics in the public galleries.

Beyond temporarily interrupting the proceedings of the Congress they accomplished nothing.

"The incompetence--to use no stronger word--of the _Vollzugsrat_ was again demonstrated today, as well as its careless financial methods.

"December 18th. A well-dressed German who stands beside me in the diplomatic gallery insists on explaining to all occupants of the gallery that it is intolerable that the speaker now in the tribune should be permitted to speak of the late 'revolt.' 'It was not a revolt; it was a revolution, and they ought to compel him to call it that,' he says. How typical of the mentality of a great number of the delegates themselves! They have spent precious hours discussing Marx and Bebel and the brotherhood of man--which, however, appears to extend only to the proletariat--but only two or three clear heads have talked of practical things. The failure of the Socialists generally to realize that it is not now a question of doing what they would like to do, but what they must do, is extraordinary and amazing.

One speaker has read nearly a chapter from one of Bebel's books.

Only a few leaders are clear-sighted enough to insist that it is more important just now to save Germany from disintegration and the German people from starvation than to impose the doctrines of internationalism upon a world not yet ready for them. The members of the average high school debating club in any American city have a keener sense for practical questions than has the great majority of this Congress.[58]

[58] This may appear to be an extravagant comparison, but it is so near the truth that I let it stand.

"December 19th. The Congress tonight changed the date for the National a.s.sembly from February 16th to January 19th. Hardly forty of the delegates opposed the change. These forty--Independents and Spartacans--tried vainly to have a resolution pa.s.sed committing Germany to the Russian Soviet system, but the vast majority would have none of it. Haase spoke in favor of the National a.s.sembly. If he maintains this course his cooperation with the three Majority members of the cabinet will be valuable, but he is a trimmer and undependable.

"The Congress was enabled by a bolt of the Independents to accomplish another valuable bit of work, viz., the appointment of a new central _Vollzugsrat_ made up entirely of Majority Socialists. It includes some excellent men, notably Cohen of Reuss, whose speech in advocacy of the National a.s.sembly and of changing its date has been the most logical and irrefutable speech made during the Congress, and Leinert, first chairman of the Congress. With the support of this new executive committee the cabinet will have no excuse if it continues to s.h.i.+lly-shally along and fails to exhibit some backbone.

"But I am apprehensive. A scraggly-bearded fanatic in one of the public galleries today repeatedly howled insults at Majority Socialist speakers, and, although repeated remonstrances were made, n.o.body had enough energy or courage to throw him out.

Leinert once threatened to clear the galleries if the demonstrations there were repeated. The spectators promptly responded with hoots, hisses and the shaking of fists, but the galleries were not cleared.

"German government in miniature! The same mentality that places guards before public buildings and orders them not to use their weapons! _Sancta simplicitas!_"

It will be observed that the foregoing report, comparatively lengthy though it is, fails to record an amount of legislative business commensurate with the length of the session. And yet there is little to add to it, for but two things of importance were done--the alteration of the date for holding the elections for the National a.s.sembly and the appointment of the new _Vollzugsrat_. Outside this the accomplishments of the Congress were mainly along the line of refusing to yield to Independent and Spartacan pressure designed to anchor the soviet scheme in the government. New light is thrown on the old _Vollzugsrat_ by the fact that it had invited the Russian Government to send delegates to the Congress. The cabinet had learned of this in time, and a week before the Congress was to a.s.semble it sent a wireless message to Petrograd, asking the government to abstain from sending delegates "in view of the present situation in Germany." The Russians nevertheless tried to come, but were stopped at the frontier.

The manner in which Haase and Dittmann had supported their Majority Socialist colleagues in the cabinet by their speeches during the Congress had demonstrated that, while there were differences between the two groups, they were not insurmountable. The events of the week following the Congress of Soviets, however, altered the situation completely.

It has been related how, in the days preceding the actual revolution in Berlin, the so-called "People's Marine Division" had been summoned to the capital to protect the government. It was quartered in the Royal Stables and the Royal Palace, and was entrusted with the custody of the Palace and its treasures.

It speedily became apparent that a wolf had been placed in charge of the sheepfold. The division, which had originally consisted of slightly more than six hundred men, gradually swelled to more than three thousand, despite the fact that no recruiting for it nor increase in its numbers had been authorized. A great part of the men performed no service whatever, terrorized inoffending people, and, as investigation by the Finance Ministry disclosed, stole everything movable in the Palace.