CHAPTER XIII.

[53]Cf. Scheidemann's statement to von Payer, chapter viii.

The Kaiser asked von Schulenberg's opinion. He disagreed with the others, and counseled resistance. He agreedthat it would be impossible to invade all Germany with united front, but advocated an attack on a few places, such as Cologne and Aachen, with picked troops, and an appeal to the people to rise against the marines, who had been "incited to action by the Jews, who had made great profits in the war, and by persons who had escaped doing their duty in the war and were now trying to knife the army in the back."

The Kaiser approved this counsel. He would not abdicate, he declared, nor would he have any part in bringing about civil warfare, but Cologne, Aachen and Verviers must be attacked immediately.

Groener was unconvinced. He declared that the revolution had gone too far and was too well organized throughout Germany to make it possible to put it down by force of arms. Moreover, he said, several army chiefs had reported that the army could no longer be depended on. The Kaiser thereupon asked for a report from every army chief on the army's dependability. A summons to this effect was sent out, and Groener, Hindenburg and von Schulenberg remained with the Kaiser.

One calamitous report after another began coming from Berlin. The military governor reported that he had no longer any dependable troops. The Chancellor telephoned that civil war was inevitable unless the Kaiser's abdication was received within a few minutes. The Kaiser and the Crown Prince conferred together. Another report came from the Chancellor that the situation in Berlin was steadily becoming graver. Admiral von Hintze, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had joined the little group in the Kaiser's rooms, declared that the monarchy could not be saved unless the Kaiser abdicated at once.

Von Schulenberg continues:

"His Majesty thereupon told Excellency von Hintze to telephone to the Chancellor that, in order to prevent bloodshed, he would abdicate as Kaiser, but that he would remain as King of Prussia and not leave his army. I declared that His Majesty's decision should be formulated in writing and telephoned to the Chancellor only when it bore the Kaiser'ssignature. His Majesty thereupon commissioned Excellency von Hintze, Generals von Pless and Marschall and myself to draw up the declaration. While we were at work on it, the chief of the Imperial Chancellery, Excellency von Wahnschaffe, telephoned. I talked with him myself, and when he said that the abdication must be in Berlin within a few minutes, answered that such an important matter as the Kaiser's abdication could not be completed in a few minutes. The decision was made and was now being put into form; the government must be patient for the half-hour that would be required to place the abdication in its hands. The declaration had the following form:"'1. His Majesty is prepared to abdicate as Kaiser if further bloodshed can be hindered thereby."'2. His Majesty desires that there be no civil war."'3. His Majesty remains as King of Prussia and will lead his army back to the homeland in disciplined order.'"This declaration was approved and signed by His Majesty, and was telephoned by Excellency von Hintze to the Chancellery. At 8:10 o'clock in the evening His Majesty received from the office of the Imperial Chancellor a report of the announcement made public through the Wolff Bureau, in which the Imperial Chancellor, without waiting for the Kaiser's answer, had reported the Kaiser's abdication as Kaiser and King. His Majesty received the news with the deepest seriousness and with royal dignity. He asked my views on the situation. I answered:"'It is a coup d'état, an abuse of power to which your Majesty must not submit. Your Majesty is King of Prussia, and there is now more than ever a pressing necessity for Your Majesty to remain with the army as supreme commander. I guarantee that it will be true to Your Majesty.'"His Majesty replied that he was and would remain King of Prussia, and that he would not abandon the army. Thereupon he commissioned Generals von Pless and Marschall and Excellency von Hintze to report to the Field Marshal what had happened. He then took leave of the Crown Prince and of me. After I had left, he called me back, thanked me once more and said:"'I remain King of Prussia and I remain with the troops.'"I answered:"'Come to the front troops in my section. Your Majesty will be in absolute safety there. Promise me to remain with the army in all events.'"His Majesty took leave of me with the words:"'I remain with the army.'"I took leave of him and have not seen him again."

"'1. His Majesty is prepared to abdicate as Kaiser if further bloodshed can be hindered thereby."'2. His Majesty desires that there be no civil war."'3. His Majesty remains as King of Prussia and will lead his army back to the homeland in disciplined order.'

"'1. His Majesty is prepared to abdicate as Kaiser if further bloodshed can be hindered thereby.

"'2. His Majesty desires that there be no civil war.

"'3. His Majesty remains as King of Prussia and will lead his army back to the homeland in disciplined order.'

"This declaration was approved and signed by His Majesty, and was telephoned by Excellency von Hintze to the Chancellery. At 8:10 o'clock in the evening His Majesty received from the office of the Imperial Chancellor a report of the announcement made public through the Wolff Bureau, in which the Imperial Chancellor, without waiting for the Kaiser's answer, had reported the Kaiser's abdication as Kaiser and King. His Majesty received the news with the deepest seriousness and with royal dignity. He asked my views on the situation. I answered:

"'It is a coup d'état, an abuse of power to which your Majesty must not submit. Your Majesty is King of Prussia, and there is now more than ever a pressing necessity for Your Majesty to remain with the army as supreme commander. I guarantee that it will be true to Your Majesty.'

"His Majesty replied that he was and would remain King of Prussia, and that he would not abandon the army. Thereupon he commissioned Generals von Pless and Marschall and Excellency von Hintze to report to the Field Marshal what had happened. He then took leave of the Crown Prince and of me. After I had left, he called me back, thanked me once more and said:

"'I remain King of Prussia and I remain with the troops.'

"I answered:

"'Come to the front troops in my section. Your Majesty will be in absolute safety there. Promise me to remain with the army in all events.'

"His Majesty took leave of me with the words:

"'I remain with the army.'

"I took leave of him and have not seen him again."

In the general condemnation of the Kaiser, his flight to Holland has been construed as due to cowardice. His motives are unimportant, but this construction appears to be unjust. He was convinced that he had nothing to fear from his people, nor is there any reason to suppose that he would for a moment have been in danger if he had remained. It is also probable that he entertained hopes of leading a successful counter-revolutionary movement. But his protests were overruled by men in whom he had great confidence. Hindenburg and Groener, following an unfavorable report from nearly all the army chiefs regarding the feeling in their commands, told the Kaiser that they could not guarantee his safety for a single night. They declared even that the picked storm-battalion guarding his headquarters at Spa was not to be depended on.

Others added their entreaties, and finally, unwillingly and protestingly, the Kaiser consented to go.

With him went the Crown Prince. There was no one left in Germany to whom adherents of a counter-revolution could rally. Scheming politicians for months afterward painted on every wall the spectre of counter-revolution, and it proved a powerful weapon of agitation against the more conservative and democratic men in charge of the country's affairs, but counter-revolution from above—and that was what these leaders falsely or ignorantly pretended to fear—was never possible from the time the armistice was signed until the peace was made at Versailles. Counter-revolution ever threatened the stability of the government, but it was the gory counter-revolution of Bolshevism.

The Kaiser's flight had the double effect of encouraging the Socialists and discouraging the Conservatives, the rightwing of the National Liberals and the few prominent men of otherbourgeoisparties from whom at least a passive resistance might otherwise have been expected. The Junkers disappeared from view, and, disappearing, took with them the ablest administrative capacities of Germany, men whose ability was unquestioned, but who were now so severely compromised that any participation by them in a democratic government was impossible. "The German People's Republic" as it had been termed for a brief two days, became the "German Socialistic Republic." Numerically the strongest party in the land, the Socialists of all wings insisted upon putting the red stamp upon the remains of Imperial Germany.

In their rejoicing at the revolution and the end of the war, the great mass of the people forgot for the moment that they were living in a conquered land. Those that did remember it were lulled into a feeling of over-optimistic security by the recollection of President Wilson's repeated declarations that the war was being waged against the German governmental system and not against the German people, and by the declaration in Secretary Lansing's note of the previous week that the Allies had accepted the President's peace points with the exception of the second.

The Soldiers' and Workmen's Councils held plenary sessions on Monday and ratified the proceedings of Sunday. The spirit of the proceedings, especially in the Soldiers' Council, was markedly moderate. Ledebour, one of the most radical of the Independent Socialists, was all but howled down when he tried to address the soldiers' meeting in the Reichstag. Colin Ross, appealing for harmonious action by all factions of Social-Democracy, was received with applause. TheVollzugsrat, which was now in theory the supreme governing body of Germany, also took charge of the affairs of Prussia and Berlin. Two Majority and two Independent Socialists were appointed "people's commissioners" in Berlin. It is worthy of note that all four of these men were Jews. Almost exactly one per cent of the total population of Germany was made up of Jews, but here, as in Russia, they played a part out of all proportion to their numbers.In all the revolutionary governmental bodies formed under the German Socialistic Republic it would be difficult to find a single one in which they did not occupy from a quarter to a half of all the seats, and they preponderated in many places.

TheVollzugsratmade a fairly clean sweep among the Prussian ministers, filling the majority of posts withGenossen. Many of the old ministers, however, were retained in the national government, including Dr. Solf as Foreign Minister and General Scheuch as Minister of War, but each of thebourgeoisministers retained was placed under the supervision of two Socialists, one from each party, and he could issue no valid decrees without their counter-signature. The same plan was followed by the revolutionary governments of the various federal states. Some of the controllers selected were men of considerable ability, but even these were largely impractical theorists without any experience in administration. For the greater part, however, they were men who had no qualifications for their important posts except membership in one of the Socialist parties and a deep distrust of allbourgeoisofficials. The Majority Socialist controllers, even when they inclined to agree with theirbourgeoisdepartment chiefs on matters of policy, rarely dared do so because of the shibboleth of solidarity still uniting to some degree both branches of the party. Later, when the responsibilities of power had sobered them and rendered them more conservative, and when they found themselves more bitterly attacked than thebourgeoisieby their formerGenossen, they shook off in some degree the thralldom of old ideas, but meanwhile great and perhaps irreparable damage had been done.

The revolutionary government faced at the very outset a more difficult task than had ever confronted a similar government at any time in the world's history. The people, starving, their physical, mental and moral powers of resistance gone, were ready to follow the demagogue who made the most glowing promises. The ablest men of the Empire were sulking in their tents, or had been driven into an enforced seclusion, and the men in charge of the governmentwere without any practical experience in governing or any knowledge of constructive statecraft. Every one knew that the war was practically ended, but thousands of men were nevertheless being slaughtered daily to no end.

In all the Empire's greater cities the revolutionaries, putting into disastrous effect their muddled theories of the "brotherhood of man," had opened the jails and prisons and flooded the country with criminals. What this meant is dimly indicated by the occurrences in Berlin ten days later, when Spartacans raided Police Headquarters and liberated the prisoners confined there. Among the forty-nine persons thus set free were twenty-eight thieves and burglars and five blackmailers and deserters; most of the others were old offenders with long criminal records. This was but the grist from one jail in a sporadic raid and the first ten days of November had resulted in wholesale prison-releases of the same kind. The situation thus created would have been threatening enough in any event, but the new masters of the German cities, many of whom had good personal reasons for hating all guardians of law and order, disarmed the police and further crippled their efficiency by placing them under the control of "class-conscious" soldiers who, at a time when every able-bodied fighting man was needed on the west front, filled the streets of the greater cities and especially of Berlin.

The result was what might have been expected. Many of the new guardians of law and order were themselves members of the criminal classes, and those who were not had neither any acquaintance with criminals and their ways nor with methods of preventing or detecting crime. The police, deprived of their weapons and—more fatal still—of their authority, were helpless. And this occurred in the face of a steadily increasing epidemic of criminality, and especially juvenile criminality, which had been observed in all belligerent countries as one of the concomitants of war and attained greater proportions in Germany than anywhere else.

Nor was this the only encouragement of crime officially offered. In ante-bellum days, when German cities were orderly and efficient police andgendarmeriecarefully watchedthe comings and goings of every inhabitant or visitor in the land, every person coming into Germany or changing his residence was compelled to register at the police-station in his district. But now, when the retention and enforcement of this requirement would have been of inestimable value to the government, it was generally abolished. The writer, reaching Berlin a week after the revolution, went directly to the nearest police-station to report his arrival.

"You are no longer required to report to the police," said theBeamterin charge.

And thus the bars were thrown down for criminals and—what was worse—for the propagandists and agents of the Russian Soviet Republic.Die neue Freiheit(the new freedom) was interpreted in a manner justifying Goethe's famous dictum of a hundred years earlier that "equality and freedom can be enjoyed only in the delirium of insanity" (Gleichheit und Freiheit können nur im Taumel des Wahnsinns genossen werden).

TheVollzugsrat, from whose composition better things had been expected, immediately laid plans for the formation of a Red Guard on the Russian pattern. On November 13th it called a meeting of representatives of garrisons in Greater Berlin and of the First Corps of Königsberg to discuss the functions of the Soldiers' Council. It laid before the meeting its plan to equip a force of two thousand "socialistically schooled and politically organized workingmen with military training" to guard against the danger of a counterrevolution. It redounds to the credit of the soldiers that they immediately saw the cloven hoof of the proposal. "Why do we need two thousand Red Guards in Berlin?" was the cry that arose. Opposition to the plan was practically unanimous, and the meeting adopted the following resolution:

"Greater Berlin's garrison, represented by its duly elected Soldiers' Council, will view with distrust the weaponing of workingmen as long as the government which they are intended to protect does not expressly declare itself in favor of summoning a national assembly as the only basis for the adoption of a constitution."

The meeting took a decided stand against Bolshevismand, in general, against sweeping radicalism. All speakers condemned terrorism from whatever side it might be attempted, and declared that plundering and murder should be summarily punished. The destructive plans of the Spartacus group found universal condemnation, and nearly all speakers emphasized that the Soldiers' Council had no political rôle to play. Its task was merely to preserve order, protect the people and assist in bringing about an orderly administration of the government's affairs. The council adopted a resolution calling for the speediest possible holding of elections for a constituent assembly.

On the following day theVollzugsratannounced that, in view of the garrisons' opposition, orders for the formation of the Red Guard had been rescinded. The Soldiers' Council deposed Captain von Beerfelde, one of their fourteen representatives on the executive council, "because he was endeavoring to lead the revolution into the course of the radicals." It was von Beerfelde who, supporting the fourteen workmen's representatives on theVollzugsrat, had been largely instrumental in the original decision to place the capital at the mercy of an armed rabble.

The steadfast attitude of the soldiers was the more astonishing in view of the great number of deserters in Greater Berlin at this time. Their number has been variously estimated, but it is probable that it reached nearly sixty thousand. With an impudent shamelessness impossible to understand, even when one realizes what they had suffered, these self-confessed cowards and betrayers of honest men now had the effrontery to form a "Council of Deserters, Stragglers and Furloughed Soldiers," and to demand equal representation on all government bodies and in the Soviets. Liebknecht played the chief rôle in organizing these men, but Ledebour, already so radical that he was out of sympathy even with the reddest Independent Socialists, and certain other Independents and Spartacans assisted. This was too much for even the revolutionary and class-conscious soldiers under arms, and nearly a month later at least one Berlin regiment still retained enough martial pride to fire on a procession of these traitors.

In these deserters and stragglers, and in the thousands of criminals of every big city, including those liberated from jails and prisons by the revolution, Liebknecht and his lieutenants found tools admirably adapted to their ends. The Spartacans had already been indirectly recognized as a separate political party in an announcement made by the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council on November 11th, which, referring to the seizure of theLokal-Anzeigerby the Spartacans and of theNorddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitungby the Independents, pointed out that "all the Socialist factions in Berlin now have their daily paper." The Spartacans now organized. Ledebour, an aged fanatic, temperamental, never able to agree with the tenets or members of any existing party, organized an "Association of Revolutionary Foremen," which was recruited from the factories and made up of violent opponents of democratic government. To all intents and purposes this association must be reckoned as a wing of the Spartacus group. It played a large part in the January and March uprisings against the government, and throughout strengthened the hands of the opponents of democracy and the advocates of soviet rule in Germany.

Despite all its initial extravagances, thebona fidesof the Ebert-Haase government at this time cannot fairly be questioned. It honestly desired to restore order in Germany and to institute a democratic government. With the exception of Barth, the least able and least consequential member of the cabinet, all were agreed that a constituent assembly must be summoned. Haase and Dittmann, the two other Independent Socialist members, had not yet begun to coquet with the idea of soviet government, although, in the matter of a constituent assembly, they were already trying to hunt with the hounds and run with the hares by favoring its summoning, but demanding that the elections therefor be postponed until the people could be "enlightened in the Social-Democratic sense." This meant, of course, "in the Independent Social-Democratic sense," which, as we shall see, eventually degenerated into open advocacy of the domination of the proletariat.

To this government, facing multifold tasks, inexperiencedin ruling, existing only on sufferance and at best a makeshift and compromise, the armistice of November 11th dealt a terrible moral and material blow. A wave of stupefied indignation and resentment followed the publication of its terms, and this feeling was increased by the general realization of Germany's helplessness. Hard terms had, indeed, been expected, but nothing like these. One of the chief factors that made bloodless revolution possible had been the reliance of the great mass of the German people on the declarations of leaders of enemy powers—particularly of the United States—that the war was being waged against the German governmental system, the Hohenzollerns and militarism, and not against the people themselves. There can be no doubt that these promises of fair treatment for a democratic Germany did incalculably much to paralyze opposition to the revolution.

In the conditions of the armistice the whole nation conceived itself to have been betrayed and deceived. Whether this feeling was justified is not the part of the historian to decide. It is enough that it existed. It was confirmed and strengthened by the fact that the almost unanimous opinion of neutral lands, including even those that had been the strongest sympathizers of the Allied cause, condemned the armistice terms unqualifiedly, both on ethical and material grounds. It is ancient human experience that popular disaffection first finds its scapegoat in the government, and history repeated itself here. The unreflecting masses forgot for the moment the government's powerlessness. It saw only the abandonment of rich German lands to the enemy, the continuance of the "hunger-blockade" and, worst of all, the retention by the enemy of the German prisoners. Of all the harsh provisions of the armistice, none other caused so much mental and moral anguish as the realization that, while enemy prisoners were to be sent back to their families, the Germans, many of whom had been in captivity since the first days of the war, must still remain in hostile prison-camps. The authority of the government that accepted these terms was thus seriously shaken at the very outset.

The government was as seriously affected materially asmorally by the armistice. During the whole of the last year food and fuel conditions had been gravely affected by limited transportation facilities. Now, with an army of several millions to be brought home in a brief space of time, five thousand locomotives and 150,000 freight cars had to be delivered up to the enemy. This was more than a fifth of the entire rolling stock possessed by Germany at this time. Moreover, nearly half of all available locomotives and cars were badly in need of repairs, and a considerable percentage of these were in such condition that they could not be used at all. Nor was this all. Although nothing had been stipulated in the armistice conditions regarding the size or character of the engines to be surrendered, only the larger and more powerful ones were accepted. One month later it had been found necessary to transport 810 locomotives to the places agreed upon for their surrender, and of these only 206 had been accepted. Of 15,720 cars submitted in the same period, only 9,098 had been accepted. The result was a severe over-burdening of the German railways.

What this meant for Germany's economic life and for the people generally became apparent in many ways during the winter, and in none more striking than in a fuel shortage which brought much suffering to the inhabitants of the larger cities. The coalfields of the Ruhr district required twenty-five thousand cars daily to transport even their diminishing production, but the number available dropped below ten thousand. Only eight hundred cars were available to care for the production in Upper Silesia, and a minimum of three thousand was required. The effect on the transportation of foodstuffs to the cities cannot so definitely be estimated, but that it was serious is plain.

The armistice provided that the blockade should be maintained. In reality it was not only maintained, but extended. Some of the most fertile soil in Germany lies on the left bank of the Rhine, and cities along that river had depended on these districts for much of their food. With enemy occupation, these supplies were cut off. What this meant was terribly apparent in Düsseldorf after the occupation had been completed. Düsseldorf, with a population of nearly400,000, had depended on the left bank of the Rhine for virtually all its dairy products. These were now cut off, and the city authorities found themselves able to secure a maximum of less than 7,000 quarts of milk daily for the inhabitants.

A further extension of the blockade came when German fishermen were forbidden to fish even in their territorial waters in the North Sea and the Baltic. The available supply of fish in Germany had already dropped, as has been described, to a point where it was possible to secure a ration only once in every three or four weeks. And now even this trifling supply was no longer available. Vast stores of food were abandoned, destroyed or sold to the inhabitants of the occupied districts when the armies began the evacuation of France and Belgium, and millions of soldiers, returning to find empty larders at home, further swelled the ranks of the discontented.

Only the old maxim that all is fair in war can explain or justify the great volume of misleading reports that were sent out regarding food conditions in Germany in the months following the armistice. Men who were able to spend a hundred marks daily for their food, or whose observations were limited to the most fertile agricultural districts of Germany, generalized carelessly and reported that there were no evidences of serious shortage anywhere, except perhaps, in one or two of the country's largest cities. Men who knew conditions thoroughly hesitated to report them because of the supposed exigencies of war and wartime policies, or, reporting them in despite thereof, saw themselves denounced as pro-German propagandists.

Months later, when perhaps irreparable damage had been done, the truth began to come out. The following Associated Press dispatch is significant:

"London, July 1.—Germany possessed a sound case in claiming early relief, according to reports of British officers who visited Silesia in April to ascertain economic conditions prevailing in Germany. A white paper issued tonight gives the text of their reports and the result of their investigations."It is said that there was a genuine shortage of foodstuffs and the health of the population had suffered so seriously that the working classes had reached such a stage of desperation that they could not be trusted to keep the peace."

"It is said that there was a genuine shortage of foodstuffs and the health of the population had suffered so seriously that the working classes had reached such a stage of desperation that they could not be trusted to keep the peace."

One is told officially that the old régime in Russia fell "because as an autocracy it did not respond to the democratic demands of the Russian people."[54]This is an ascription to the Russian people of elevated sentiments to which they have not the shadow of a claim. The old régime fell because it did not respond to the demands of the Russian people for food. Wilhelm II fell because the Germans were hungry. It was hunger that handicapped the efforts of the Ebert-Haase government throughout its existence and it was hunger that proved the best recruiting agent for Liebknecht and the other elements that were trying to make democracy impossible in Germany. If any people with experience of hunger were asked to choose between the absolutism of Peter the Great with bursting granaries and the most enlightened democracy with empty bins, democracy would go away with its hands as empty as its bins.

[54]War Cyclopedia, issued by the Committee on Public Information, p. 241.

"Give us this day our daily bread" is the first material petition in the prayer of all the Christian peoples of the world, but only those who have hungered can realize its deep significance.

The fact is not generally known—and will doubtless cause surprise—that a determined effort was made by the American, French and British governments after the armistice to make first-hand independent reporting of events in Germany impossible. Assistant Secretary of State Polk followed the example of the other governments named by issuing on November 13th an order, which was cabled to all American embassies and legations abroad, prohibiting any American journalist from entering Germany. The State Department refused to issue passports to journalists desiring to go to adjoining neutral countries except upon their pledge not to enter Germany without permission. Requests for permission were either denied, or (in some instances) not even acknowledged.

There were, however, some American journalists stationed in lands adjoining Germany, and a few of these, although warned by members of their diplomatic corps, conceived it to be their duty to their papers and to their people as well, to try to learn the truth about the German situation, instead of depending longer upon hearsay and neutral journalists. Some of the most valuable reports reaching Washington in these early days came from men who had disobeyed the State Department's orders, but this did not save at least two of the disobedient ones from suffering very real punishment at the hands of resentful officials.

What the purpose of the State Department was in thus attempting to prevent any but army officers or government officials from reporting on conditions in Germany the writer does not know. It is probable, however, that the initiative did not come from Washington.

The conclusion of the armistice was the signal for a general collapse among Germany's armed forces. This did not at first affect the troops in the trenches, and many of them preserved an almost exemplary spirit and discipline until they reached home, but the men of theétappe—the positions back of the front and at the military bases—threw order and discipline to the winds. It was here that revolutionary propaganda and red doctrines had secured the most adherents in the army, and the effect was quickly seen. Abandoning provisions, munitions and military stores generally, looting and terrifying the people of their own villages and cities, the troops of theétappestraggled back to the homeland, where they were welcomed by the elements responsible for Germany's collapse.

The government sent a telegram to the Supreme Army Command, pointing out the necessity of an orderly demobilization and emphasizing the chaotic conditions that would result if army units arbitrarily left their posts. Commanding officers were directed to promulgate these orders:

"1. Relations between officers and men must rest upon mutual confidence. The soldier's voluntary submission to his officer and comradely treatment of the soldier by his superior are conditions precedent for this."2. Officers retain their power of command. Unconditional obedience when on duty is of decisive importance if the return march to the German homeland is to be successfully carried out. Military discipline and order in the armies must be maintained in all circumstances."3. For the maintenance of confidence between officersand men the soldiers' councils have advisory powers in matters relating to provisioning, furloughs and the infliction of military punishments. It is their highest duty to endeavor to prevent disorder and mutiny."4. Officers and men shall have the same rations."5. Officers and men shall receive the same extra allowances of pay and perquisites."

"2. Officers retain their power of command. Unconditional obedience when on duty is of decisive importance if the return march to the German homeland is to be successfully carried out. Military discipline and order in the armies must be maintained in all circumstances.

"3. For the maintenance of confidence between officersand men the soldiers' councils have advisory powers in matters relating to provisioning, furloughs and the infliction of military punishments. It is their highest duty to endeavor to prevent disorder and mutiny.

"4. Officers and men shall have the same rations.

"5. Officers and men shall receive the same extra allowances of pay and perquisites."

"Voluntary submission" by soldiers to officers might be feasible in a victorious and patriotic army, but it is impracticable among troops infected with Socialist doctrines and retreating before their conquerors. Authority, once destroyed, can never be regained. This was proved not only at the front, but at home as well.Die neue Freiheit(the new freedom), a phrase glibly mouthed by all supporters of the revolution, assumed the same grotesque forms in Germany as in Russia. Automobiles, commandeered by soldiers from army depots or from the royal garages, flying red flags, darted through the streets at speeds defying all regulations, filled with unwashed and unshaven occupants lolling on the cushioned seats. Cabmen drove serenely up the left side of Unter den Linden, twiddling their fingers at the few personally escorted and disarmed policemen whom they saw. Gambling games ran openly at street-corners. Soldiers mounted improvised booths in the streets and sold cigarettes and soap looted from army stores.

Earnest revolutionaries traveled through the city looking for signs containing the wordkaiserlich(imperial) orköniglich(royal), and mutilated or destroyed them. Court purveyors took down their signs or draped them. TheKaiser Kellerin Friedrichstrasse became simply aKellerand the bust of the Kaiser over the door was covered with a piece of canvas. The Royal Opera-House became the "Opera-House Unter den Linden."

One of the most outstanding characteristics of the German people in peace times had been their love of order. Even the superficial observer could not help noticing it, and one of its manifestations earned general commendation. This was that the unsightly billboards and placarded walls that disfigure American cities were never seen in Germany. Neat andsightly columns were erected in various places for official, theatrical or business announcements, and no posters might be affixed anywhere else. Nothing more strikingly illustrates the character of the collapse in Germany than the fact that it destroyed even this deeply ingrained love of order.Genossenwith brushes and paste-pots calmly defaced house-walls and even show windows on main streets with placards whose quality showed that German art, too, had suffered in the general collapse of the Empire.

There was something so essentially childish in the manner in which a great part of the people reacted todie neue Freiheitthat one is not surprised to hear that it also turned juvenile heads. Several hundred schoolboys and schoolgirls, from twelve to seventeen years old, paraded through the main streets of Berlin, carrying red flags and placards with incendiary inscriptions. The procession stopped before the Prussian Diet building, where the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council was in session, and presented a list of demands. These included the vote for all persons eighteen years old or over, the abolition of corporal punishment and participation by the school-children in the administration of the schools. The chairman of theVollzugsratof the council addressed the juvenile paraders, and declared that he was in complete sympathy with their demands.

A seventeen-year-old lad replied with a speech in which he warned the council that there would be terrible consequences if the demands were not granted. The procession then went on to the Reichstag building, where speeches were made by several juvenile orators, demanding the resignation or removal of Ebert and Scheidemann and threatening a general juvenile strike if this demand was not accepted immediately.

Enthusiasm was heightened in the first week of the revolutionary government's existence by reports that enemy countries were also in the grip of revolution. Tuesday's papers published a report that Foch had been murdered, Poincaré had fled from Paris and the French government had been overthrown. Reports came from Hamburg and Kiel that English sailors had hoisted the red flag and werefraternizing with German ships' crews on the North Sea. The Soldiers' Council at Paderborn reported that the red flag had been hoisted in the French trenches from the Belgian border to Mons, and that French soldiers were fraternizing with the Germans. That these reports found considerable credence throws a certain light on the German psychology of these days. The reaction when they were found to be false further increased the former despondency.

The six-man cabinet decreed on November 15th the dissolution of the Prussian Diet and the abolishment of the House of Lords. Replying to a telegram from President Fehrenbach of the Reichstag, asking whether the government intended to prevent the Reichstag from coming together in the following week, the cabinet telegraphed:

"As a consequence of the political overturn, which has done away with the institution of German Kaiserdom as well as with the Federal Council in its capacity of a lawgiving body, the Reichstag which was elected in 1912 can also not reconvene."

The cabinet—subject to the control theoretically exercisable by theVollzugsrat—was thus untrammeled by other legislative or administrative institutions. But it was, as we have seen, trammeled from without by the disastrous material conditions in Germany, by the mental and moral shipwreck of its people, by the peculiar German psychology and by the political immaturity of the whole nation—a political immaturity, moreover, which even certain cabinet members shared. From within the cabinet was also seriously handicapped from the start by its "parity" composition, that is to say, the fact that power was equally divided between Majority and Independent Socialists without a deciding casting vote in case of disagreement along party lines. If the Independent Socialist cabinet members and the rank and file of their party had comprehended the real character and completeness of the revolution, as it was comprehended by some of the theorists of the party—notably Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein—and if they had avoided their disastrous fellowship with Joffe and other Bolshevik agents, the subsequent course of events would have been different. But theylacked this comprehension and they had been defiled in handling the pitch of Bolshevism.

All the revolutions of the last century and a quarter had been ofbourgeoisorigin. They had, however, been carried into effect with the aid of the proletariat, since thebourgeoisie, being numerically much weaker than the proletariat, does not command the actual brute force to make revolution. At first thebourgeoisie, as planners of the overthrow, took control of the authority of the state and exercised it for their own ends. The proletariat, which had learned its own strength and resources in the revolutionary contests, used its power to compel a further development of the revolution in a more radical direction and eventually compelled the first holders of authority to give way to a government more responsive to the demands of the lower classes. Thus the events of 1789 in Paris were followed by the victory of the Montane party, the events of September 4, 1870, by those of March 18, 1871, and the Kerensky revolution in Petrograd by the Bolshevik revolution of November, 1917.

The German revolution, however, alone among the great revolutions of the world, was, as has already been pointed out, both in its origins and execution, proletarian and Socialistic. Thebourgeoisiehad no part in it and no participation in the revolutionary government. Any attempt to develop the revolution further by overthrowing or opposing the first revolutionary government could therefore serve only factional and not class interests. Factional clashes were, of course, inevitable. The members of the Paris Commune split into four distinct factions, Jacobins, Blanquists, Proudhonists and a small group of Marxist Internationalists. But these, bitterly as they attacked each other's methods and views, nevertheless presented at all times a united front against thebourgeoisie, whereas the German Independent Socialists, from whom better things might have been expected, almost from the beginning played into the hands of the Spartacans, from whom nothing good could have been expected, and thus seriously weakened the government and eventually made a violent second phase of the revolution unavoidable.

If it be admitted that Socialist government was the proper form of government for Germany at this time, it is clear that the Independent Socialists had a very real mission. This was well expressed in the first month of the revolution in a pamphlet by Kautsky, in which he wrote:

"The extremes (Majority Socialists and Spartacans) can best be described thus: the one side (Majority) has not yet completely freed itself frombourgeoishabits of thought and still has much confidence in thebourgeoisworld, whose inner strength it overestimates. The other side (Spartacans) totally lacks all comprehension of thebourgeoisworld and regards it as a collection of scoundrels. It despises the mental and economic accomplishments of thebourgeoisieand believes that the proletarians, without any special knowledge or any kind of training, are able to take over immediately all political and economic functions formerly exercised by thebourgeoisauthorities."Between these two extremes we find those (the Independents) who have studied thebourgeoisworld and comprehend it, who regard it objectively and critically, but who know how properly to value its accomplishments and realize the difficulties of replacing it with a better system. This Marxist center must, on the one hand, spur the timorous on and awaken the blindly confiding, and on the other, put a check upon the blind impetuosity of the ignorant and thoughtless. It has the double task of driving and applying the brakes."These are the three tendencies that contend with each other within the ranks of the proletariat."

"Between these two extremes we find those (the Independents) who have studied thebourgeoisworld and comprehend it, who regard it objectively and critically, but who know how properly to value its accomplishments and realize the difficulties of replacing it with a better system. This Marxist center must, on the one hand, spur the timorous on and awaken the blindly confiding, and on the other, put a check upon the blind impetuosity of the ignorant and thoughtless. It has the double task of driving and applying the brakes.

"These are the three tendencies that contend with each other within the ranks of the proletariat."

Indications of the coming split with the cabinet were observable even in the first week of the government's existence. Together with its decree dissolving the Diet, the cabinet announced that "the national government is engaged in making preparations for the summoning of a constituent assembly at the earliest possible moment." The overwhelming majority of the German people already demanded the convening of such a body. Only the Spartacans, who had formally effected organization on November 14th, openly opposed it as a party, but there was much anti-assemblysentiment in Independent Socialist ranks, although the party had as yet taken no stand against it. Richard Müller, the dangerous Independent Socialist demagogue at the head of the workmen's section of theVollzugsrat, was one of the most rabid opponents of a national assembly and one of the men responsible for his party's subsequent opposition to it. Speaking at a meeting of theVollzugsraton November 19th he said:

"There is a cry now for a national assembly. The purpose is plain. The plan is to use this assembly to rob the proletariat of its power and lay it back in the hands of thebourgeoisie. But it will not succeed. We want no democratic republic. We want a social republic."

Haase, speaking for the cabinet, cleverly avoided putting himself on record as to whether or not a national assembly would eventually be called. It could not be called together yet, he said, because preparations must first be made. Election lists must be drawn up and the soldiers in the field must have an opportunity to vote. Moreover, the soldiers, who had been "mentally befogged" by the pan-German propaganda at the front, must be "enlightened" before they could be permitted to vote. Large industries must also be socialized before time could be taken to summon aconstituante.

It soon became apparent that the work in the cabinet was not going smoothly. Ebert, Scheidemann and Landsberg, Socialists though they were, lacked any trace of that fanaticism which marks so many Socialist leaders. They were sobered by their new responsibilities. Looked at from above, administrative problems presented a different picture from that which they had when viewed from below by men whose chief rôle had been one of opposition and criticism. Sweeping socialization of all industries, regulation of wages and hours of work, the protection of society against criminals, the raising of revenue, the abolishing of capitalism and capitalists—these things were less simple than they had seemed. To socialize the administration of the state was not difficult, for that was a mechanism which had been built up. But society, as these novices in government now comprehended more clearly than before, is an organism which hasgrown up. The product of centuries of growth cannot be recklessly made over in a few weeks.

The Majority Socialist trio, realizing the impracticability of tearing down old institutions before there was something better to take their place, moved slowly in instituting reforms. This was little to the liking of the radicals within and without the cabinet. Haase, politician before all else, and Dittmann, class-conscious fanatic, insisted on speedier reforms along orthodox Socialist lines, and particularly on a far-reaching socialization of big industries. Nearly a year earlier Haase, Cohn and Ledebour, attending the notorious Joffe banquet, had approved Bolshevik attacks on the Majority Socialists and excused the slow progress of the revolutionary propaganda by saying that "those—Eberts and Scheidemanns" could not be brought to see reason. It was hardly to be expected that the Independents would be milder now. The work of the cabinet was hampered already, although the Independent members kept up a pretense of working with the old party's representatives.

Haase, Dittmann and Barth were supported by theVollzugsrat. This body, which had started out by ordering the restoration to their owners of the newspapers seized during the revolution, had so far faced about two days later that Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were able to exhibit to the publishers of theLokal-Anzeigeran order from theVollzugsratdirecting them to place their plant at the disposal of the Spartacans for the printing ofDie rote Fahne, whose editor the Luxemburg woman was to be. The order did not even hint at any compensation for the publishers. Naturally they refused flatly to obey it, and the Greater Berlin Soldiers' Council, still dominated by men of the better sort, meeting two days later, indignantly denounced the action of theVollzugsratand compelled the withdrawal of the order.

Despite the fact that the Majority and Independent Socialists were evenly represented on this council, the latter dominated it. Brutus Molkenbuhr, the Majority Socialist co-chairman with Richard Müller was no match for his fanatic colleague, and most of the other members werenobodies of at most not more than average intelligence. A more poorly equipped body of men never ruled any great state, and whatever of good was accomplished by the cabinet in the first month of its existence was accomplished against the opposition of a majority of these men. Müller's radicalism grew daily greater. "The way to a national assembly must lead over my dead body" he declared in a speech filled with braggadocio, and his hearers applauded.

The Soldiers' Council noted with increasing displeasure the drift of theVollzugsrattoward the left. At the end of November, after a stormy session, the council adopted a resolution expressing dissatisfaction with the attitude of theVollzugsratand appointing one representative from each of the seven regiments stationed in Berlin to weigh charges against the executive council and, if necessary, to reform it. The resolution charged theVollzugsratwith holding secret sessions, usurping powers, grafting, nepotism,[55]failure to take steps to protect the country's eastern border against the aggressions of the Poles and hindering all practical work.

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