And the Kaiser abdicates Part 5

Outwardly, however, what was eventually to become a revolutionary movement made no headway during the spring and summer of 1915. The shortage of food, although making itself felt, had not yet brought general suffering. The German armies had won many brilliant victories and suffered no marked reverse. Mackensen's invasion of Galicia in May and June revived the spirits of the whole nation, in which, as among all other belligerent nations, a certain war-weariness had already begun to manifest itself.

The open break in the Socialist party first became apparent at the session of the Reichstag on December 21, 1915. The government had asked for a further war-credit of ten billion marks. Haase had a week earlier drawn up a manifesto against the war, but the newspapers had been forbidden to print it. At this Reichstag session he employed his parliamentary prerogatives to get this manifes...o...b..fore the people in the form of a speech attacking the war as one of aggression, and announced that he would vote against the credit asked. Fourteen other members of his party voted with him. The German people's solid war-front had been broken.

The motives of most of those who thus began the revolt against the government and who were later responsible for the revolution are easy to determine. Many were honest fanatics, and some of these, chief among them Liebknecht, carried their fanaticism to a degree calling for the serious consideration of alienists. Others again were moved by purely selfish considerations, and some of them had criminal records. Haase presented and still presents a riddle even for those who know him well.

Judged by his speeches alone, he appears in the light of an honest internationalist, striving to further the welfare of his own and all other peoples. Judged by his conduct, and particularly his conduct in the months following the revolution, he appears in the light of a political desperado whose acts are dictated by narrow personal considerations. He was particularly fitted for leaders.h.i.+p of the government's opponents by the absence from his makeup of the blind fanaticism that characterized the majority of these, and by an utter unscrupulousness in his methods. He was free also from that fear of inconsistency which has been called the vice of small minds.

The questions growing out of the manner of conducting the submarine warfare became acute in the first months of 1916. The government was determined to prevent any open debate on this subject in the Reichstag, and the deputies of all parties bowed to the government's will. Haase and his little group of malcontents, however, refused to submit. They carried their opposition to the authority of their own party to such an extent that a party caucus decided upon their exclusion. The caucus vote was followed on the same day--March 24, 1916--by the formal secession from the party of Haase and seventeen other members, who const.i.tuted themselves as a separate party under the designation of "Socialist Working Society" (_Arbeitsgemeinschaft_). The seceders included, among others, Georg Ledebour, Wilhelm Dittmann, Dr. Oskar Cohn, Emil Barth, Ernst Daumig and Eduard Bernstein. Liebknecht, who had been excluded from the party a year earlier, allied himself to the new group. All its members were internationalists.

The formation of the new party furnished a rallying point for all radical Socialists and also for the discontented generally, and the numbers of these were increasing daily. Under the protection of their parliamentary immunity these members were able to carry on a more outspoken and effective agitation against the war. Haase, Ledebour and other members of the group issued a manifesto in June, 1916, wherein it was declared that the people were starving and that the only replies made by the government to their protests took the form of a severe application of martial law. "The blockade should have been foreseen,"

said the manifesto. "It is not the blockade that is a crime; the war is a crime. The consolation that the harvest will be good is a deliberate deception. All the food in the occupied territories has been requisitioned, and people are dying of starvation in Poland and Serbia."

The manifesto concluded with an appeal to the men and women of the laboring-cla.s.ses to raise their voices against the continuance of the war.

The underground propaganda against the war and the government a.s.sumed greater proportions, and encouraged the revolutionaries in the Reichstag. Grown bold, Haase announced that a pacifist meeting would be held in Berlin on August 30. It was prohibited by the police. Sporadic strikes began. Ruhle had staged the first avowedly political strike at Leipsic on May Day. It failed, but set an example which was followed in other parts of the empire.

Liebknecht, who had been mustered into the army and was hence subject to military regulations, was arrested on May Day in Berlin for carrying on an anti-war and anti-government agitation among the workingmen. On trial he was sentenced to thirty months' imprisonment and to dishonorable dismissal from the army. This was the signal for widespread strikes of protest in various cities. There was serious rioting in Berlin on July 1st, and grave disorders also occurred at Stuttgart, Leipsic and other cities. Liebknecht appealed from the conviction and the appellate court raised the sentence to four years and one month, with loss of civil rights for six years. This caused a recrudescence of July's demonstrations, for a sentence of this severity was most unusual in Germany. Liebknecht's personal followers and party friends swore vengeance, and many others who had theretofore kept themselves apart from a movement with which they secretly sympathized were rendered more susceptible to radical anti-war propaganda.

The autumn of 1916 brought the government's so-called _Hilfsdienstgesetz_, or Auxiliary Service Law, intended to apply military rules of enrollment and discipline to the carrying out of necessary work at home, such as wood-cutting, railway-building, etc.

This law produced widespread dissatisfaction, and Haase, by attacking it in the Reichstag, increased his popularity and poured more oil upon the flames of discontent. In March, 1917, he declared openly in the Reichstag that Germany could not win the war and that peace must be made at once.

The Russian revolution of this month was a factor whose influence and consequences in Germany can hardly be exaggerated. Not even the wildest dreamer had dared to believe that a revolution could be successfully carried through in war-time while the government had millions of loyal troops at its disposal. That it not only did succeed, but that many of the Tsar's formerly most loyal officers, as, for example, Brussiloff, immediately joined the revolutionaries, exerted a powerful effect. And thus, while Germans loyal to their government hailed the revolution as the downfall of a powerful enemy, the ma.s.ses, starving through this terrible _Kohlrubenwinter_, cold, miserable, dispirited by the b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices from which few families had been exempt, infected unconsciously by the doctrines of international Socialism and skillfully propagandized by radical agitators, began to wonder whether, after all, their salvation did not lie along the route taken by the Russians.

The radical Socialists who had left the old party in 1916 organized as the Independent Socialist Party of Germany at a convention held in Gotha in April, 1917. Eighteen men had left the party a year earlier, but one hundred and forty-eight delegates, including fifteen Reichstag deputies, attended the convention. Haase and Ledebour were chosen chairmen of the executive committee, and a plan of opposition to the further conduct of the war was worked out. Party newspaper organs were established, and some existing Socialist publications espoused the cause of the new party. Revolution could naturally be no part of their open policy, and there may have been many members of the party who did not realize what the logical and inevitable consequences of their actions were. The leaders, however, were by this time definitely and deliberately working for the overthrow of the government, although it may be doubted whether even they realized what would be the extent of the _debacle_ when it should come.

Reference has already been made to strikes in various parts of the empire. These had been, up to 1918, chiefly due to dissatisfaction over material things--hunger (the strong undercurrent of all dissatisfaction), inadequate clothing, low wages, long hours, etc. They were encouraged and often manipulated by radical Socialists who perceived their importance as a weapon against the government, and were to that extent political, but the first great strike with revolution as its definite aim was staged in Berlin and Essen at the end of January, 1918. The strength of the Independent Socialists and of the more radical adherents of Liebknecht, Ledebour, Rosa Luxemburg and others of the same stamp, while it had increased but slowly in the rural districts and the small towns, had by this time reached great proportions in the capital and generally in the industrial sections of Westphalia. Two great munition plants in Berlin employing nearly a hundred thousand workers were almost solidly Independent Socialist in profession and Bolshevist in fact. The infection had reached the great plants in and around Essen in almost equal degree. A great part of these malcontents was made up of youths who, in their early teens when the war broke out, had for more than three years been released from parental restraint owing to the absence of their soldier-fathers and who had at the same time been earning wages that were a temptation to lead a disordered life. They were fertile ground for the seeds of propaganda whose sowing the authorities were unable to stop, or even materially to check. Even Liebknecht, from his cell, had been able to get revolutionary communications sent out to his followers.

The January strike a.s.sumed large proportions, and so confident were the Berlin strikers of the strength of their position that they addressed an "ultimatum" to the government. This ultimatum demanded a speedy peace without annexations or indemnities; the partic.i.p.ation of workingmen's delegates of all countries in the peace negotiations; reorganization of the food-rationing system; abolis.h.i.+ng of the state of siege, and freedom of a.s.sembly and of the press; the release of all political prisoners; the democratization of state inst.i.tutions, and equal suffrage for women.

The strikers appointed a workmen's council to direct their campaign, and this council chose an "action commission," of which Haase was a member.

The authorities, in part unable and in part unwilling to make the concessions demanded, took determined steps to put down the strike.

Their chief weapon was one that had been used repeatedly, and, as events proved, too often and too freely. This weapon was the so-called _Strafversetzungen_, or punitive transfers into the front-army. The great part of the strikers were men subject to military duty who had been especially reclaimed and kept at work in indispensable industries at home. They were, however, subject to military law and discipline, and the imminent threat of being sent to the front in case of insubordination had prevented many strikes that would otherwise have come, and the carrying into effect of this threat had broken many revolts in factories. Thousands of these men, who had been drawing high wages and receiving extra allowances of food, were promptly sent into the trenches.

Every such _Strafversetzung_ was worse than a lost battle in its effect.

The victims became missionaries of revolution, filled with a burning hatred for the government that had pulled them from their comfortable beds and safe occupations and thrown them into the hail of death and the hards.h.i.+ps of the front. They carried the gospel of discontent, rebellion and internationalism among men who had theretofore been as sedulously guarded against such propaganda as possible. The morale of the soldiery was for a time restored by the successes following the offensive of March, 1918, and it never broke entirely, even during the terrible days of the long retreat before the victorious Allied armies, but it was badly shaken, and the wild looting that followed the armistice was chiefly due to the fellows of baser sort who were at the front because they had been sent thither for punishment.

Yet another factor played an important part in increasing discontent at the front. One can say, without fear of intelligent contradiction, that no other country ever possessed as highly trained and efficient officers as Germany at the outbreak of the war. There were martinets among them, and the discipline was at best strict, but the first article of their creed was to look after the welfare of the men committed to their charge. Drawn from the best families and with generations of officer-ancestors behind them, they were inspired by both family and cla.s.s pride which forbade them to spare themselves in the service of the Fatherland. The mortality in the officer-corps was enormous. About forty per cent of the original officers of career were killed, and a majority of the rest incapacitated. The result was a shortage of trained men which made itself severely felt in the last year of the war. Youths of eighteen and nineteen, fresh from the schools and hastily trained, were made lieutenants and placed in command of men old enough to be their fathers. The wine of authority mounted to boyish heads. Scores of elderly German soldiers have declared to the writer independently of each other that the overbearing manners, arbitrary orders and arrogance of these youths aroused the resentment of even the most loyal men and increased inestimably the discontent already prevailing at the front.

CHAPTER VI.

Propaganda and Morale.

Even before the anti-war and revolutionary propaganda had attained great proportions there were indications that all was not well in one branch of the empire's armed forces. Rumblings of discontent began to come from the navy early in the second year of the war, and in the summer of 1916 there was a serious outbreak of rioting at Kiel. Its gravity was not at first realized, because Kiel, even in peace times, had been a turbulent and riotous city. But a few months later the rioting broke out again, and in the early summer of 1917 there came a menacing strike of sailors and s.h.i.+pyard and dock laborers at Wilhelmshaven. This was mainly a wage-movement, coupled with a demand for more food, but it had political consequences of a serious nature.

The first displays of mutinous spirit among the men of the fleet were not so much due to revolutionary and radical Socialist propaganda as to a spontaneous internal dissatisfaction with the conditions of the service itself. No continuously extensive use of the submarines had been made up to the middle of the winter of 1916. There had been spurts of activity with this weapon, but no sustained effort. By March, 1916, however, many U-boats were being sent out. At first they were manned by volunteers, and there had been a surplus of volunteers, for the men of the submarine crews received special food, more pay, liberal furloughs and the Iron Cross after the third trip. Within a year, however, conditions changed decidedly. The percentage of U-boats lost is not yet known, but the men of the fleet reckoned that a submarine rarely survived its tenth trip. The Admiralty naturally published no accounts of boats that failed to come back, and this added a new terror to this branch of the service.

Volunteers were no longer to be had. The result was that drafts were resorted to, at the first from the men of the High Seas fleet, and later from the land forces. Such a draft came to be considered as equivalent to a death-sentence.[16] Disaffection increased in the fleet. The Independent Socialists were prompt to discover and take advantage of these conditions. The sailors were plied with propaganda, oral and written. The character of this propaganda was not generally known until October 9, 1917, when the Minister of Marine, Admiral von Capelle, speaking in the Reichstag, informed the astonished nation that a serious mutiny had occurred in the fleet two months earlier, and that it had been necessary to execute some of the ringleaders and imprison a number of others.

[16] The heavy losses among army aviators had brought about a similar state of affairs at this time in the army. Volunteers for the fighting planes ceased offering themselves, and a resort to forced service became necessary.

Von Capelle's disclosures came as answer to an interpellation by the Independent Socialist deputies regarding pan-German propaganda at the front and the prohibition of the circulation of twenty-three Socialist newspapers among the men of the s.h.i.+ps. The Independent Wilhelm Dittmann made a long speech supporting the interpellation, and voiced a bitter complaint over the fact that pan-German agitation was permitted at the front and among the fleet, while the Independent Socialist propaganda was forbidden. Dr. Michaelis, the Imperial Chancellor, made a brief response, in which he announced that Admiral von Capelle would answer the Independents. "I will merely say one thing," he said, "and that is that Deputy Dittmann is the last man in the world who has a right to talk about agitation in the army and navy."

Michaelis referred then to a complaint by Dittmann that he (Michaelis) had not been true to his promise, made upon a.s.suming office, to treat all parties alike. "Dittmann has forgotten to add the qualification which I made at that time," said the Chancellor. "I said all parties that do not threaten the existence of the empire or follow aims dangerous to the state. The party of the Independent Social-Democrats stands on the other side of that line so far as I am concerned."

This was the first open declaration by the government of war on the party of Haase, Dittmann, et al. The Majority Socialists--as the members of the old or parent organization were now termed--joined in the tumult raised by their seceding brethren. When the storm had laid itself, Admiral von Capelle made his sensational disclosures. He said:

"It is unfortunately a fact that the Russian revolution has turned the heads of a few persons on board our fleet and caused them to entertain matured revolutionary ideas. The mad plan of these few men was to secure accomplices on all s.h.i.+ps and to subvert the whole fleet, all members of the crews, to open mutiny, in order, by force if necessary, to paralyze the fleet and compel peace.

"It is a fact that these men have entered into relations with the Independent Socialist Party. It has been formally established by the evidence that the ringleader presented his plans to Deputies Dittmann, Haase and Vogtherr in the caucus-room of the Independent Socialists here in the Reichstag building, and that it received the approval of these men.

"It is true that these deputies pointed out the extreme danger of the proposed action and warned the conspirators to observe the greatest caution, but they promised their whole-hearted support through the furnis.h.i.+ng of agitation material designed to incite the fleet to mutiny."

Von Capelle's speech was interrupted at this point by cries of indignation from the parties of the right and center, and by abusive remarks directed against the speaker from the Socialists of both factions. When the presiding-officer had succeeded in restoring a semblance of order, the Admiral continued:

"In view of this situation it was my first duty to prevent with all possible means at my disposal the circulation of the incitatory literature among the fleet.

"I do not care at this time to go into details concerning the further happenings in the fleet. Some few men who had forgotten honor and duty committed grave crimes and have undergone the punishment which they deserved. I will only add here that the rumors in circulation, which have naturally come also to my ears, are exaggerated beyond all measure. The preparedness of the fleet for battle has not been brought in question for a single moment, and it shall and will not be."

The three deputies named by von Capelle defended themselves in speeches which, judged even on their merits and without reference to the personalities and records of the men making them, did not ring quite true or carry complete conviction. In the light of the previous and subsequent conduct of the trio and of the occurrences of November, 1918, their s.h.i.+fty and evasive character is apparent. We have already learned something of Haase's activities, and the other two were among his ablest and most energetic lieutenants. Dittmann, virtually a Communist and p.r.o.nounced internationalist, was later arrested for pro-revolutionary activities. Erwin Vogtherr, the third member of the group, had from the very beginning been one of the most perniciously active of all revolutionary propagandists and agitators. He had been for some time the editor of _Der Atheist_ (The Atheist), and was of that uncompromising type of atheists who consider it necessary to keep their hats on in church to show their disbelief in a Creator.

Haase, in his reply to the charges against him, admitted that the mutineers' ringleader had had a conference with him, Dittmann and Vogtherr. But this, he declared, was nothing out of the ordinary, since it was both his custom and his duty to receive the men who came to him from both army and navy to complain of conditions. The sailor referred to by Admiral von Capelle had visited him during the summer and complained bitterly about the conditions which he and his colleagues were compelled to endure. Haase continued:

"He declared further that the sailors, and especially those of lengthy service, felt keenly the lack of mental stimulus, that great numbers of them had subscribed to Independent Socialist publications, were reading them zealously and receiving stimulus from them. It was their intention to educate themselves further and to devote themselves to political discussions in meetings on land. To this end they desired to have literature. Although, as has been shown in the last days, political discussions have been carried on under full steam, even officially, I called this sailor's attention to the fact that what was in itself permissible, might, under the peculiar conditions under which we lived, become dangerous, and I warned him to be cautious. This much is correct."

Haase denied that the sailor had submitted any revolutionary plan to him or his colleagues, and challenged Admiral von Capelle to produce his evidence.

It is difficult for one who, like the writer, has a thorough acquaintance with the Independent Socialist publications, to take seriously the statement that they were desired merely for "mental stimulus" by sailors who wished to "educate themselves further." The plain tendency of all these publications, disguised as cleverly as it might be in an attempt to escape confiscation of the issue or prosecution for treason, was revolutionary. A certain degree of venomousness, scurrility and abuse of _bourgeois_ opponents has always characterized all but a few Socialist publications in all lands, and the Independent Socialist press far outdid the organs of the old party in this respect. It preached internationalism and flouted patriotism; it ridiculed all existing authority; it glorified the Russian revolution in a manner calculated to induce imitation by its readers, and, following the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in November, 1917, it published regularly the reports of the _Isvestia_ and other Bolshevik organs, with laudatory editorial comment. The man who "educated himself further" by a reading of the Independent Socialist publications was educating himself for revolution and for nothing else.

Vogtherr set up a straw man in his reply and demolished it to the complete satisfaction of himself and his brother Socialists, including, strangely enough, also the Majority Socialists, who, despite the fact that the Independent Socialist press had cla.s.sified them with _bourgeoisie_ and attacked them even more bitterly, on this occasion exhibited solidarity of feeling with their more radical colleagues.

Vogtherr declared that von Capelle had charged the Independents with having worked out a plan for revolution in the fleet. This alleged charge he denied. He spoke with a certain pathos of the oppressed sailors who recognized in the Independents their real friends and naturally came to them instead of going to deputies in whom they had no confidence. He, too, demanded that the Minister of Marine produce his proof. Vogtherr, like Haase before him, devoted a part of his speech to a general attack on von Capelle and Michaelis, plainly the attempt of a practical politician to confuse the issue.

Dittmann spoke briefly along the lines followed by Haase and Vogtherr.

He had, he said, carefully warned his sailor-visitors to keep within safe bounds. He refused to permit either Admiral von Capelle or Chancellor Michaelis to restrict his rights as Reichstag deputy to receive visitors and hear their complaints. Dittmann cleverly enlisted further the sympathy of the Majority Socialists by pointing out that several of their publications had also come under the ban of the Admiralty.

Von Capelle responded to the challenge of the trio to produce his evidence. He read the following testimony, given at the court-martial by one of the lieutenants of the mutineers' ringleader, a man named Sachse.

This witness testified:

"I, too, made a personal visit to Deputy Dittmann in the Reichstag after Reichpietsch (the ringleader) had visited him. I introduced myself by saying that I came from Reichpietsch and that I came in the same matter. Dittmann indicated that he knew what I meant. He was glad to see me and said: 'We must go ahead in the same way, but we must use great caution.'

"Regarding his conference with the members of the party Reichpietsch told me the following: He had not been with Dittmann alone, but there had been a kind of a party conference, partic.i.p.ated in by Dittmann, Vogtherr and Haase. Reichpietsch communicated to them the plan and the results thus far attained by the organization, which, according to his declaration, was very enthusiastic about the matter.

"After discussion of the details of the organization, the deputies told Reichpietsch that this was a prohibited and punishable undertaking and a very daring one, and he must be very careful. So far as they were concerned, they would support his agitation in every manner, and especially through pamphlets and other literature."

Admiral von Capelle further read from the testimony of the ringleader, Reichpietsch, who, after reading Sachse's testimony, had said under oath:

"Insofar as this testimony concerns me it is correct. That is to say, what I told Sachse was a true report of what had happened in Berlin."