Part 17 (2/2)

The state government gave the Berlin cabinet notice that decrees of the Minister of War had no validity in Brunswick. General Scheuch, the Minister of War, resigned in disgust.

What later became an epidemic of strikes began. Seventy thousand workers were idle in Berlin. Upper Silesia reported serious labor troubles throughout the mining districts, due to Russian and German Bolshevist agitators and Poles.

A less happy New Year for men responsible for the affairs of a great state was doubtless never recorded.

CHAPTER XV.

Liebknecht Tries to Overthrow the Government; Is Arrested and Killed.

In the six weeks that Emil Eichhorn had been Police-President of Berlin the situation in his department had become a public scandal. The arming of the criminal and hooligan cla.s.ses by this guardian of public safety, which had at first been carried on quietly, was now being done openly and shamelessly, and had reached great proportions. Liebknecht and Ledebour, Spartacan and Independent, were in constant and close fellows.h.i.+p with him. A considerable part of the Republican Soldier Guard had been turned from allegiance to the government that had appointed them and could be reckoned as adherents of Eichhorn. The Berlin police department had become an _imperium in imperio_.

The _Vollzugsrat_ conducted a formal investigation of Eichhorn's official acts. The investigation, which was conducted honestly and with dignity, convicted the Police-President of gross inefficiency, insubordination, diversion and conversion of public funds, and conduct designed to weaken and eventually overthrow the government. _Vorwarts_ was able to disclose the further fact that Eichhorn had throughout his term of office been drawing a salary of 1,800 marks monthly from Lenine's _Rosta_, the Bolshevik propaganda-central for Germany. The _Vollzugsrat_ removed Eichhorn from office.

Eichhorn, relying on the armed forces at his disposal and doubtless equally on the probability that a Socialist government would not dare use actual force against _Genossen_, refused to comply with the order for his removal. The more ignorant of his followers--and this embraced a great proportion--saw in the _Vollzugsrat's_ action the first move in that counter-revolution whose specter had so artfully been kept before their eyes by their leaders.

It is a current saying in England that when an Englishman has a grievance, he writes to the _Times_ about it. When a German has a grievance, he organizes a parade and marches through the city carrying banners and transparencies, and shouting _hoch_! (hurrah!) for his friends and _nieder_! (down) with his enemies. On Sunday, January 5th, a great demonstration was staged as a protest against Eichhorn's removal.

It is significant that, although Eichhorn was an Independent Socialist, the moving spirit and chief orator of the day was the Spartacan Liebknecht. This, too, despite the fact that at the convention where the Spartacus League had been reorganized a week earlier, the Independents had been roundly denounced as timorous individuals and enemies of Simon-Pure Socialism. Similar denunciations of the Spartacans had come from the Independents. The psychology of it all is puzzling, and the author contents himself with recording the facts without attempting to explain them.

Sunday's parade was of imposing proportions, and it was marked by a grim earnestness that foreboded trouble. The organizers claimed that 150,000 persons were in the line of march. The real number was probably around twenty thousand. Transparencies bore defiant inscriptions. ”Down with Ebert and Scheidemann, the Bloodhounds and Grave-diggers of the Revolution!” was a favorite device. ”Down with the Bloodhound Wels!” was another. Cheers for ”our Police-President” and groans for the cabinet were continuous along the line of march. The great ma.s.s of the paraders were ragged, underfed, miserable men and women, mute testimony to the sufferings of the war-years.

Liebknecht addressed the paraders. Counter-revolution, he declared, was already showing its head. The Ebert-Scheidemann government must be overthrown and the real friends of the revolution must not shrink from using violence if violence were necessary. Others spoke in a similar vein.

Conditions appeared propitious for the _coup_ that had been preparing for a month. Late Sunday evening armed Spartacans occupied the plants of the _Vorwarts_, _Tageblatt_, the Ullstein Company (publishers of _Die Morgenpost_ and _Berliner Zeitung-am-Mittag_), the _Lokal-Anzeiger_ and the Wolff Bureau.

The Spartacans in the _Vorwarts_ plant published on Monday morning _Der rote Vorwarts_ (the Red _Vorwarts_). It contained a boastful leading Article announcing that the paper had been taken over by ”real revolutionists,” and that ”no power on earth shall take it from us.” The Liebknechtians also seized on Monday the Buxenstein plant, where the _Kreuz-Zeitung_ is printed. There was much promiscuous shooting in various parts of the city. Spartacans fired on unarmed government supporters in front of the war ministry, killing one man and wounding two. There were also b.l.o.o.d.y clashes at Wilhelm Platz, Potsdamer Platz and in Unter den Linden.

The _Vollzugsrat_ rose to the occasion like a _bourgeois_ governing body. It conferred extraordinary powers on the cabinet and authorized it to use all force at its disposal to put down the Bolshevist uprising.

That it was Bolshevist was now apparent to everybody. The cabinet, still hesitant about firing on _Genossen_, conferred with the Independents Haase, Dittmann, Cohn and Dr. Rudolf Breitscheid, the last named one of the so-called ”intellectual leaders” of the Independent Socialists.

These men wanted the government to ”compromise.” The cabinet declared it could listen to no proposals until the occupied newspaper plants should have been restored to their rightful owners. The delegation withdrew to confer with the Spartacan leaders. These refused flatly to surrender their usurped strongholds.

Several lively street battles marked the course of Tuesday, January 7th.

The Spartacans succeeded in driving the government troops from the Brandenburger Tor, but after a short time were in turn driven out.

Spartacan and Independent Socialist parades filled the streets of the old city. The government did nothing to stop these demonstrations. Haase and the other members of Monday's delegation spent most of the day trying to induce the government to compromise. Their ingenious idea of a ”compromise” was for the entire cabinet to resign and be replaced by a ”parity” government made up of two Majority Socialists, two Independents and two Spartacans. This, of course, would have meant in effect a government of four Bolsheviki and two Majority Socialists. Despite their traditions of and training in party ”solidarity,” the cabinet could not help seeing that the ”compromise” proposed would mean handing the government over bodily to Liebknecht, for Haase and Dittmann had long lost all power to lead their former followers back into democratic paths. The bulk of the party was already irrevocably committed to practical Bolshevism. The scholarly Eduard Bernstein, who had followed Haase and the other seceders from the Majority Socialists in 1916, had announced his return to the parent party. In a long explanation of the reasons for his course he denounced the Independents as lacking any constructive program and with having departed from their real mission.

They had become, he declared, a party committed to tearing down existing inst.i.tutions. Other adherents of the party's right wing refused to have anything to do with the new course.

The night of January 7th was marked by hard fighting. Spartacans repeatedly attacked government troops at the Anhalt Railway Station in the Koniggratzerstra.s.se, but were repulsed with heavy losses. They also attacked the government troops defending the Potsdam Railway Station, a quarter of a mile north from the Anhalt Station, but were also repulsed there. Government soldiers, however, had considerable losses in an unsuccessful attempt to retake the Wolff Bureau building at Charlottenstra.s.se and Zimmerstra.s.se. On Wednesday, the section of the city around the Brandenburger Tor was again filled with parading Bolsheviki, but the government had plucked up enough courage and decision to decree that no parades should be permitted to enter Wilhelmstra.s.se, where the seat of government is situated. Spartacans attempted to invade this street in the afternoon, but scattered when government soldiers fired a few shots, although the soldiers fired into the air. The Independent go-betweens again a.s.sailed the cabinet in an effort to secure the ”compromise” government suggested the day before.

The delegation was hampered, however, both by the fact that the cabinet realized what such a compromise would mean and by the fact that the Independents could promise nothing. The Spartacans stubbornly refused to surrender the captured newspaper plants, and the Independents themselves were committed to the retention in office of Eichhorn.

Eichhorn, still at his desk in Police Headquarters, refused even to admit to the building Police-President Richter of Charlottenburg, who had been named as his successor, and he and his aides were still busily arming deluded workingmen and young hooligans of sixteen and seventeen, as well as some women. The People's Marine Division announced that it sided with the government, but it played little part in its defense.

The rattle of machine-guns and the crack of rifles kept Berliners awake nearly all night. The hardest fighting was at the _Tageblatt_ plant, in front of the Foreign Office and the Chancellor's Palace, and around the Brandenburger Tor. Thursday morning found the government decided to put an end to the unbearable conditions. It was announced that no parades would be tolerated and that government soldiers had been ordered to shoot to kill if any such aggregations disobeyed orders to disperse.

Spartacus, realizing that the government meant what it said, called no meetings, and the streets were free of howling demonstrants for the first time since Sunday.

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