Part 10 (1/2)
Haussmann and Noske reached Kiel late Monday afternoon. The parading mutineers met them at the station. Noske, speaking from the top of an automobile, addressed the crowd, appealing to their patriotism and to the German instinct for orderly procedure. Their main demands, he pointed out, had already been granted. The government, representing all parties of the empire, promised that all grievances should be heard and redressed. The speech appeared to have some effect. Isolated demonstrations took place until into the evening, but there were no serious clashes anywhere.
The situation seemed somewhat more hopeful. The leaders on both sides either could not or did not realize what powerful and pernicious influences were working against them. The Governor felt his hand strengthened by the presence of Haussmann, the Minister; the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council was both calmed and encouraged by the presence of Noske, the party leader. The members of the council and the men representing the Kiel government began a joint session in the evening.
Four delegates of the Social-Democratic party of Kiel also attended the conference, although their party had already, at a meeting a few hours earlier, virtually decided to order a general sympathy strike.
The deliberations of the conference showed that the situation had suddenly a.s.sumed the aspect of a strike, a mere labor and party question. The soldier and sailor delegates left the debate largely to the party leaders. Both sides, government and strikers alike, showed themselves honestly desirous of finding a peaceful settlement. The difficulties proved, however, to be very great. At 1:00 A.M., on Tuesday, the conference took a recess. Noske telegraphed to Berlin: ”Situation serious. Send me another man.” But despite all difficulties both sides were hopeful.
Of the many thousands of mutineers, however, there were many who were not disposed to await an orderly adjustment of the situation. Already potential masters of the squadron, they set about trans.m.u.ting potentiality into actuality. On one s.h.i.+p after another the red flag of sedition, the emblem of the negation of loyalty to native land, replaced the proud imperial standard. It is an amazing thing that in all Germany not a dozen of the thousands of officers whose forefathers had for two centuries enjoyed the privileges of an exclusive and loyal caste gave their lives for their King in an effort to oppose revolt and revolution.
At Kiel, and later at Hamburg, Swinemunde, Berlin--in fact, everywhere--the mutineers and revolutionaries met no resistance from the very men of whom one might have expected that they would die, even in a forlorn cause, in obedience to the old principle of _n.o.blesse oblige_.
At Kiel there were but three of this heroic mold. These men, whose names deserve to be remembered and honored wherever bravery and loyalty are prized, were Commander Weniger, Captain Heinemann and Lieutenant Zenker of the battles.h.i.+p _Konig_, who were shot down as, revolver in hand, they defended the imperial standard and killed several of the men who were trying to replace it with the red rag of revolution. Captain Heine, commandant of the city of Kiel, was shot down in the hallway of his home Tuesday evening by sailors who had come to arrest him. These four men were the only officers deliberately shot in Kiel, except the two fatally wounded in Sunday night's fighting at the military prison.
Admiral Krafft, commander of the Kiel squadron, finally decided to leave port with his s.h.i.+ps. But it was too late. Some of the s.h.i.+ps had to be left behind, for the mutineers, coming alongside in small fis.h.i.+ng-steamers and other craft, had compelled the loyal remnants of the crews to refuse to obey the order to accompany the squadron. Even on the s.h.i.+ps least affected by the mutiny, hundreds of the crews refused to come aboard. Word of the revolt had moreover reached other coast cities, and when the s.h.i.+ps reached Lubeck, Flensburg, Swinemunde and other ports, it proved impossible to keep the missionaries of mutiny ash.o.r.e and on s.h.i.+pboard from communicating with each other. Thus the contagion was spread further.
Tuesday was a day of tense excitement at Kiel. There was some shooting, due--as was also the case later in Berlin--to false reports that officers had fired from houses on the mutineers. The streets were filled with automobiles carrying red flags, and red flags began to appear over various buildings. Noske, feverishly active, devoting all his iron energy to restoring order and finding a peaceful solution of the revolt, conferred continuously with representatives of the city government, with military and naval authorities and with the strikers. The movement still had outwardly only the aspect of a strike, serious indeed, but still a strike. He succeeded in having countermanded an order bringing troops to the city. Despite this, the suspicious mutineers compelled the Governor to go with them to the railway station in order to send the troops back if it should prove that the counterorder had not reached them in time.
At the request of the mutineers--who treated the Governor with all courtesy--he remained at the station until the troop train arrived empty.
The situation on Tuesday was adversely affected by the flight of Prince Heinrich, brother of the Kaiser. He was not unpopular with the men of the navy and he was never even remotely in danger. Yet he fled from Kiel in an automobile and, fleeing, destroyed the remnant of authority which his government still enjoyed. The flight itself rendered the strikers nervous, and the fact that the death of a marine, who was shot while standing on the step of the Prince's automobile, was at first ascribed to him, enraged the mutineers and was a further big factor in rendering nugatory the efforts of Noske and all others who were honestly striving to find a way out of the situation. Autopsy showed that the marine had been shot in the back by one of the bullets fired after the fleeing automobile by the victim's own comrades. This disclosure, however, came a day later, and then it was too late to undo the mischief caused by the first report.
A ”non-resistance” order, the first one of many that helped make the revolution possible, was also issued on Tuesday by the military authorities. Officers were commanded not to use force against the strikers. ”Only mutual understanding of the demands of the moment can restore orderly conditions,” said the decree.
Wednesday, the fourth day of the revolt at Kiel, was the critical and, as it proved, the decisive day. When night came the mutineers were crowned with victory, and the forces of orderly government had lost the day. And yet, strangely enough, neither side realized this. The strikers believed themselves isolated in the corner of an undisturbed empire. The more conservative among them began to consider their situation in a different light. There was an undercurrent of feeling that no help could be looked for from other quarters and that a reconciliation with the authorities should be sought. Noske shared this feeling. Speaking to the striker's delegates late on Wednesday evening, he advised them to compromise. Seek an agreement with the government, he said in effect.
The government is ready and even eager to reach a fair compromise. We stand alone, isolated.
Neither Noske nor the bulk of the mutineers yet knew what had been going on elsewhere in northwestern Germany. The Independent Socialist and Spartacan plotters for revolution at Berlin saw in the Kiel events the opportunity for which they had been waiting for more than three years, and they struck promptly. Haase and some of his followers went immediately to Hamburg, and other revolutionary agents proceeded to the other coast cities to incite strikes and revolts. The ground had been so well prepared that their efforts were everywhere speedily successful. In the few cities where the people were not already ripe for revolution, the supineness of the authorities made the revolutionaries' task a light one. Leaders of the Kiel mutineers met the Berlin agitators in different cities and cooperated with them.
The procedure was everywhere the same. Workmen's and soldiers' councils were formed, policemen and loyal troops were disarmed and the city government was taken over by the soviets. By Thursday evening soviet governments had been established in Hamburg, Cuxhaven, Wilhelmshaven, Bremen, Hanover, Rostock, Oldenburg and other places. The soviets in virtually all these places were controlled by Independent Socialists--even then only a slight remove from Bolsheviki--and their spirit was hostile not alone to the existing government, but equally to the Majority Socialists. At Hamburg, for instance, the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council, which had forcibly taken over the Majority Socialist organ _Hamburger Echo_ and rechristened it _Die rote Fahne_, published a proclamation forbidding the press to take any notice whatever of proclamations issued by the Majority Socialists or the leaders of trade-unions. The proclamation declared that ”these elements will be permitted to cooperate in the government, but they will not be permitted to present any demands.” Any attempt to interfere with the soviet was declared to be counter-revolutionary, and it was threatened that such attempts would ”be met with the severest repressive measures.”
The revolution at Hamburg was marked by much shooting and general looting. A semblance of order was restored on November 8th, but it was order only by comparison with the preceding day, and life and property were for many days unsafe in the presence of the vicious elements in control of the city. Prisoners were promiscuously released. Russian prisoners of war, proudly bearing red ribbons and flags, marched with their ”brothers” in the demonstrations. A detachment of marines went to Harburg, near by, and liberated all the prisoners confined in the jail there.
The cowardice, supineness and lack of decision of the authorities generally have already been referred to. A striking and characteristic ill.u.s.tration is furnished by the story of the revolution at Swinemunde, on the Baltic Sea. Two wars.h.i.+ps, the _Dresden_ and _Augsburg_, were in the harbor when news came of the Kiel mutiny. The admiral was Count Schwerin and one of his officers was Prince Adalbert, the sailor-son of the Kaiser. The crews of the s.h.i.+ps were loyal, and the Prince was especially popular with them. The garrison at Swinemunde was composed of fifteen hundred coast artillerists and some three hundred marines. The artillerists were all men of the better cla.s.s, technically educated and thoroughly loyal. At a word from their commanding-officer they would have blown any mutinous s.h.i.+p out of the water with their heavy coast guns. And yet Admiral Count Schwerin and Prince Adalbert donned civilian clothing and took refuge with civilian friends ash.o.r.e.
Thirty-six submarines arrived at five o'clock in the afternoon, but left two hours later because there was no food to be had at Swinemunde. The coast artillerists begged to be allowed to wipe out the mutineers. The mayor of Swinemunde protested. Sh.e.l.ls from the sea, he said, might fall into the city and damage it. And so, under the guns of loyal men, the sailors looted the s.h.i.+ps completely during the evening and night.
A committee of three marines called on Major Grunewald, commander of the fortress, and insolently ordered him to direct the garrison to appoint a soldiers' council. The artillerists were dumfounded when the major complied. The council appointed consisted of three marines, one artillerist and one infantryman, of whom there were about a hundred in the garrison. One of the members was an officer, Major Grunewald having been ordered to direct the appointment of one. When the council had been formed the troops were drawn up to listen to a speech by a sergeant of marines. The major, his head bared, listened obediently.
”We are the masters here now,” said the sergeant. ”It is ours to command, yours to obey. The salute is abolished. When we meet a decent officer we may possibly say 'good day, major,' to him, but when we meet some little runt (_Schnosel_) of a lieutenant we shan't recognize him.
The officers may now go to their quarters. We don't need them. If we should need them later we shall tell them.”[27]
[27] The flight of Prince Heinrich and later of the Kaiser made a painful impression in Germany, especially among Germans of the better cla.s.s, and did much to alienate sympathy from them. It had been thought that, whatever other faults the Hohenzollerns might possess, they were at least not cowards.
The flight of Prince Adalbert is even today not generally known.
The government at Berlin and the Majority Socialists endeavored, even after the events already recorded, to stem the tide, or at least to lead the movement into more orderly channels. Stolten and Quarck, Socialist Reichstag deputies, and Blunck, Progressive deputy, and Stubbe and Schumann, Socialists, representing the executive committee of the central labor federation, went to Hamburg. But Haase, Ledebour and the other agitators had done their work too well. Thursday morning brought the reports of the successes of the uprisings to the mutineers at Kiel, who were on the point of returning to their s.h.i.+ps. A Workmen's and Soldiers' Council was formed for the whole province of Schleswig-Holstein. The revolt had already become revolution. The revolutionaries seized the railway running from Hamburg to Berlin, and also took charge of telephonic and telegraphic communication. Their emissaries started for Berlin.
It has been set forth in a previous chapter that the promise of President Wilson to give the Germans a just peace on the basis of his fourteen points and the supplementary points, and his declaration that the war was against a system and not against the German people themselves had played a very considerable part in making the revolution possible. This appears clearly in the report of the events at Bremen. On November 7th a procession, estimated at thirty thousand persons, pa.s.sed through the city and halted at the market place. A number of speeches were made. One of the chief speakers, a soldier, reminded his hearers that Wilson had said that a peace of justice was possible for the Germans only if they would take the government into their own hands.
This had now been done, and n.o.body could reproach the revolutionaries with being unpatriotic, since their acts had made a just peace possible.
A similar address was made at a meeting of the revolutionaries in Hanover, where the speaker told his hearers that the salvation of Germany depended upon their loyal support of the revolution, which had placed all power in the hands of the people and fulfilled the conditions precedent ent.i.tling them to such a peace as the President had promised them.