Part 16 (1/2)

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIV.

The Majority Socialists in Control.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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