The New Germany

CHAPTER IIIToC

THE COUNCIL REPUBLICS

The first result of the failure of German Liberalism and of the Weimar Assembly was that revolution and reaction came into active collision with each other in the provincial capitals.

These two conflicts ran concurrently, and collision in the provinces was a necessary consequence of collision in the capital. Moreover, when the revolution had failed twice to assert itself by force in Berlin, it stood little chance of surviving in Bavaria, Brunswick, or Bremen. Such spontaneous and sporadic appeals to force met by organised police measures and prosecutions only prevented the Socialist party from reuniting, and forced German politics into a duel between the propertied classes and the proletariat, in which the latter had no prospect of success.

This duel started in Berlin in the December and January conflicts which were settled in favour of the Government, and its subsequent continuance in the provinces had the same result.

The outbreaks in the coast ports and the coal districts of Westphalia were remote, and their unexpectedly easy repression by flying columns only confirmed the Government in a policy of coercion. The outbreaks in Munich and the south were outside the political orbit in which the Government was moving. If the spread of the general strike from the west to Saxony, which broke Germany in two and cut Berlin off from Weimar, was more serious, yet the Maerker column soon succeeded, in removing any danger to Weimar and in reopening communications with Berlin. These outbreaks were not formidable enough to force the Government to depart from its policy of suppressing not only revolts, but the revolution.

But the general strike and street fighting in Eastern Berlin during March although it was intentionally exaggerated so as to impress Paris with the Bolshevist danger, did for a few days imperil not only the Scheidemann Government, but the whole Parliamentary system. Both were consequences of the coalition which by giving the Government a class basis had made it quite incapable of going halfway to meet the revolutionary demands for recognition of the Council System and for socialisation. At first, party ties had held the moderate mass of the Social-Democratic workmen; but as time passed and the middle-class mentality of the men in power became more and more marked, dissatisfaction with the Government and defections to the Opposition grew rapidly. Even Vorwärts admitted there was cause of complaint.

In vain did the Government poster the streets with pathetic protests that "socialisation is already here," and issued manifestoes pointing to its legislative achievements—Eight-Hour Day, Unemployment Benefit, Land Settlement, what we should call "Whitley Councils" in coal-mining districts, War Pensions, and Repeal of War Measures. These had already been put in force provisionally by the previous Government, and did not amount to much any way. In vain did the Government profess its intention of pushing through the two Bills approving, in principle, nationalisation of coal mines and potash deposits; for no one wanted nationalisation except as a step to socialisation. The workmen felt that the Government was, as one put it to me, "a revolution profiteer." It had perverted the purposes and pocketed the profits of the revolution. They felt that Weimar, as another one expressed it, was only a "soviet of profiteers" and would produce no socialist legislation.

The revolutionary opponents of the Coalition saw their opportunity, but their leaders could secure no combination or concerted action. Nothing, indeed, was more surprising than the incapacity of the Germans to associate and organise for a political purpose.

The general impression one got was that Germany had so grown to look on political responsibility as the function of a specialised class that they never could consider anyone outside that class as capable of replacing any member of it. We see something of the same sort of helplessness growing up in England, where it is becoming increasingly difficult for the man in the street to conceive a Cabinet formed from outside a small clique of the ruling class. And the German revolutionaries of the Opposition showed themselves as incapable of making use of their opportunities as did their Liberal opponents in the Government. The game was in the revolutionaries' hands in the early months of the year if they could have combined. But the different disturbed districts declared war on the Government at just such intervals of time as allowed them to be conveniently beaten in detail by very small forces. Each district again was divided into all manner of dissentient organisations in different stages of development. In some the Councils were really representative, in others they had co-opted themselves; while there were as many kinds of revolutionary corps as of Councils.

In Berlin alone there were some ten different corps. A leader of one of the last insurgent parties to hold out, told me, during an attack by the Government troops, that it was not the great disparity of numbers and munitions that had defeated him, but the difficulty of getting the revolutionaries to work together.

Moreover, the issue between reaction and revolution in Berlin was fought out in two different and quite distinct conflicts, that were invariably confused by the foreign Press. One took the form of strikes the other of street fighting. The general strike was the resistance of the Workmen's Council organisations to suppression by the middle-class Ministry. The street fighting was the resistance of the remains of the old revolutionary forces to suppression by the new Frei-Corps "mercenaries" of the reaction. The two developed concurrently though with little connection.

The strikes that were always breaking out everywhere for no apparent reason culminated in the Berlin general strike of March. This general strike was forced on the reluctant Majority Socialists by the Independents, themselves propelled by the Communists. For these two latter controlled the Executive Committee of the Berlin Councils. But though the Majority Socialists did not oppose the general strike, they did their best to make it a failure, and when, after three days, the Communists pressed for its extension to water, gas, electricity, and food supply in order to support the fighting Spartacists, the Majoritarians withdrew, and by the end of the week the strike was declared off. The Majority Socialists' proposal for unconditional surrender was rejected, that of the Independents for surrender on conditions of amnesty accepted, and the conditions were agreed to by the Government. Thereupon the Left of the Communists, including the brilliant Clara Zetkin, took the opportunity of this crisis and of the party caucus (Parteitag) then sitting in Berlin to secede to the Spartacists.

The loss of their Left wing was, however, more than compensated to the Independents by the movement leftward in the ranks of the Social-Democrats, the supporters of the Government. And this leftward trend was accentuated by disapproval of the action of the Government in bombarding whole quarters of Berlin and in shooting wholesale its political opponents. This rapid response of the Council system to a trend in public opinion was in strong contrast to the irresponsive inertia of the Weimar Assembly, which remained representative only of a nationalist mood, and remote from the whole Socialist movement.

The Ministry had to give to the political pressure. Already before the strike it indicated concessions as to industrial socialisation and constitutional sanction of the Councils, and these were elaborated and established by negotiations at Weimar with missions sent from the Central and Executive Councils. These concessions were in principle very considerable, and much more than could ever have been imposed in practical application on the Centrum supporters of the Government. The result of this crisis was therefore to prepare the way for a reconstruction of the Government on a moderate Socialist basis, between a Centrum-Conservative opposition to the Right and a Communist to the Left. This would have represented the true balance of political power at the time; and the fact that it would not have had a majority at Weimar would have been only a formal difficulty.

But this, the natural, solution was made impossible by the extraordinary severity with which the armed resistance to the Government was punished. For this severity made it impossible for even the most moderate Independents to join the Government. And this fighting was not a development of the strike, but of the campaign carried on by the Government with volunteer flying columns against the revolutionary corps throughout Germany.

Of these corps, of which there were many in Berlin, the most important were the Republican Guard and the Marine Division. The former had from the first supported the Government, while the Marine Division of Kiel sailors had already been in collision with it in December. The other corps were all more or less in opposition, and some were mere camouflage for bad characters. Until these corps were dispersed the constitutional Government had no complete control of Berlin apart from their "Council" rival, the Executive Committee. A first step was made towards their suppression by the arrest of sixty ringleaders; whereupon the Marine Division and the other corps prepared for resistance, with the assistance of the Spartacist irregulars and a rabble of roughs and rascals. These were joined later by about half the Republican Guard, which had come into collision with the Frei-Corps—the Government volunteer contingents. The strikers, however, took no part in the fighting.

The strike was declared on a Monday; Tuesday passed in preparations by the regulars and plunderings by the rabble, and on Wednesday the garrisons of Government buildings in the east central district of Berlin were attacked and besieged. They were hard pressed, but held out, being supplied by aeroplane until relieved by an offensive of the Government's troops on Thursday afternoon. For some hours a tremendous bombardment was carried on round the Alexanderplatz and neighbouring streets, but the damage to property though considerable could only have been as little as it was if at least half the "hows" and "minnies" had been firing blank; for the benefit rather of the correspondents than of the insurgents. The insurgents' positions were eventually made untenable by aeroplane observation and bombing. During the following days they were driven, with terrific fusillades and some fighting, through the east end into the suburbs, where the bombardments were continued for no obvious reason for several days.

Berlin will long remember those Ides of March. So shall I, not because of Thursday's fighting—you could generally get your fill of such fighting in Germany those days—but because on that Thursday I got a real lunch. It was a good lunch—oysters, veal cutlets, and pancakes. It was given me by a banker, and cost just about four shillings a mouthful. I know, because I counted them. And in the cellars of the same house were families living on 5 lbs. of bad potatoes and 5 lbs. of black bread a week.

The banker and I were enemies, and I was nominally and nationally engaged in starving him; though, as members of our respective Independent Labour Parties, we were politically working in the same cause. And a few streets away men of one race and one class were killing each other respectively in the names of Law and Liberty. Such was European civilisation in the year of Our Lord 1919.

But probably you are more interested in the fighting; so, if you like, I will take you two excursions through it. We will start the first on Thursday afternoon, when the insurgent soldiers and Spartacists were trying to force their way westward from their base in the east end, across the Spree, past the Schloss, to the Linden, and the Government troops were trying to drive them eastward. The main battleground was the Alexanderplatz, from which radiate the main thoroughfares leading east.

At the west end of the Linden all is much as usual. Instead of the omnibuses laid up by the general strike long German farm carts drawn by ponies are carrying passengers perched on planks resting on packing-cases. Lorries with mounted machine-guns patrol up and down, and machine-gun pickets guard all important buildings. As we go east the roadway empties and the traffic on the pavements thickens into hesitating groups all facing eastward, or knots encircling some political discussion. Further on the roadway is blocked by artillery of the Lüttwitz Volunteer Corps going into action—field-guns, trench mortars, and minenwerfer, the latter towed behind lorries loaded with the missiles, great brown conical cylinders 4 ft. high. Here, too, is the first cordon, and the game of "passes" begins.

The main rules are not to revoke by playing a pass from the wrong side, and not to put on a higher card than is necessary. I take this trick with quite a low card, the Foreign Office pass. At the next cordon I try quite a good card—a pink Weimar Press pass with a photograph, but he won't have it. I go one better with a British passport, Royal Arms and all, but he trumps this by shoving his rifle under my nose and saying, "Be off!" I have still a special pass from the Kommandantur, and, best of all, a visiting card with "Noske" scribbled on it, but the game is over here. These Government volunteers, boys of eighteen or nineteen, shoot from the hip or anyhow, and are all on hair triggers.

We try round another way. A soldier with a rifle at the ready comes down the middle of the empty street scanning the windows. "Window shut," he shouts, aiming at one. A red poster proclaims that anyone loitering will be shot at. We are now in the danger zone. A lorry hurries forward, the bottom spread with brown stained mattresses. The noise becomes bewildering—the crack of roof snipers and the rap of the machine-guns are incessant. A field-gun is banging away round the corner, and that heavy boom is a minenwerfer shelling the Alexanderplatz.

The main struggle has already passed into the roads radiating eastward, which the insurgents are barricading hastily, while others on tugs retreat south down the Spree. But of this fight we can only see the aeroplanes swooping a few hundred feet over the roofs and bombing the machine-gun nests. An insurgent plane engages for a few minutes, but retires outnumbered. The battle is over; though fighting will go on for days as the troops drive the insurgents from one street to another through the eastern quarter out into the suburbs.

And now it is the following Tuesday, and I will take you for our second excursion into the insurgent camp at Lichtenberg—the most easterly suburb of Berlin, where the main body still holds out. This morning's Government bulletin has told us that the victorious Government troops have cleared the whole East End, except Lichtenberg, which is encircled with a "ring of steel." That several thousand insurgents have barricaded all approaches and are sweeping them with field-guns. That they have destroyed hundreds of tons of flour. That they have shot sixty—a hundred—two hundred prisoners. That others have been torn in pieces by the mob, which has taken wounded from the ambulances and clubbed them to death. That no one in a decent coat can venture on the street without being murdered. That in consequence of these "bestial atrocities" anyone found with arms will be shot. But we've read war bulletins before!

On our way we pass a convoy of prisoners, hands handcuffed behind their backs, armed motor-cars before and behind. A young soldier blazes off several shots to scatter the crowd, at which a well-dressed woman remonstrates, but she is at once arrested and put with the convoy.

Here we are at the Warschauer Brücke over the Spree, where there is an imposing concourse of steel-helmeted troops and guns, and a cordon. We pass this after being searched for arms, and across the bridge come on a lot of guns and machine-guns firing fiercely down the Warschauer Strasse, though there is no audible reply or visible reason. After watching the shells holing houses, we start working our way round to the south through empty streets, keeping close to the house-fronts and taking cover when bullets whisper a warning. At last crowded streets again, and through them to a broad avenue crossed by shallow trenches and ramshackle barricades—the much-bulletined Frankfurter Allee. Here an insurgent picket takes charge of us and undertakes to bring us to the secret Headquarters.

"But where are your field-guns?" we ask.

"Field-guns? We haven't any," they say, surprised.

"And how do you keep the troops in check?"

"Oh, those boys! Two of us take machine-guns, charge with them down each side of the street, and they run."

"And how many of you are there?"

"Some two or three hundred perhaps—it varies, but we're all old soldiers—we allow no boys to fight for us."

"And have you shot the sixty policemen you took in the Lichtenberg station?"

"Sixty policemen? There aren't that number in all Lichtenberg. Two got shot defending the station, but after they surrendered to a quarter of their number we let them all go home. You can go and see any of them."

It is impossible not to believe these intelligent, even intellectual and eminently honest faces. So the sixty policemen follow the field-guns and the "ring of steel" into the limbo of "White" lies.

We pass a railway goods yard where plundered flour is being carried away in sacks.

"Where is that going?" we ask.

"To the bakers, and afterwards to be distributed gratis to the crowd."

We see later women with red crosses distributing loaves from a cart to women and children. We reach our destination, only to be warned by a woman just in time that it is now occupied by troops—a narrow escape that so shakes the nerve of our guide that he takes refuge in a dressing station improvised in a shop. Here are "neutral" doctors and nurses, very angry at the bombardment of crowded tenement houses and the reckless shooting by the young volunteers. They run great risks, as robbers have so often misused the Red Cross that it is now no protection against the Government troops. Here are many wounded, mostly women and children, and but a few fighters. The latter all indignantly deny having shot prisoners, though they know the other side are doing it. And then at last to the evasive Headquarters, where the leaders tell us of what they hope to achieve by this desperate resistance of a few hundred men armed with rifles and bombs against as many thousands armed with all the machinery of modern war.

"Noske," they say, "is only a puppet in the hands of Majors Gilsa and Hammerstein, and they are agents of the Eden Hotel, the headquarters of the Cavalry Guard and the centre of reaction. The old story again of Bethmann-Hollweg, Ludendorff, and the General Staff, militarism and monarchism is what all this bombardment means, for they want to convince the Entente that they must have a large standing Army. They have just raised the pay and doubled the rations of these young mercenaries. Why don't the Entente abolish them and insist on a Swiss Militia here?

"If this White Guard goes on, we shall organise a Red Guard, and we shall win. But that will mean Bolshevism. We are not Bolsheviks, but Socialists to-day. We have offered to keep order in Berlin and here, with a militia representing all parties, but they go on bombarding. It is the old Prussian terrorism again. They have learnt nothing from the war."

And, so, in the twilight, back the way we came, wondering at the working of moral laws that have now subjected Berlin to a self-inflicted punishment of bombardments and bombings worse than any of those it inflicted on other cities.

Firing heavy artillery at crowded tenement houses, even with reduced charges and plentiful blank, means a butcher's bill of several thousands, mostly women and children, and damage to property of several millions.

Next day we extract the following from the advertisement sheet of our daily paper:—

The behaviour of the Government can only be explained by their having left the whole matter to Noske, who, in turn, left it to his military advisers, Majors Gilsa, Pabst, and Hammerstein, who again were agents only of the militarist reactionary faction. This faction intended to exploit the crisis by killing two birds with one stone—the anti-Bolshevists at Paris and the pro-Bolshevists at Berlin. Their policy was to make an excuse for raising a large professional army with which to suppress the revolution and, if the gods were kind, to restore Germany's ancient régime and its racial frontiers. For this purpose atrocities were invented as a pretext for reprisals and for recruiting and raising the pay of the Frei-Corps. The Government could have kept order of a sort through the revolutionary corps if it had kept in touch with the revolutionary councils; but it fought the corps with flying columns of under-trained over-armed boys, and it fought the councils with its patched-up majority of old parliamentary hands and party hacks.

In the resultant civil war that raged, and still rages, all over Germany one may distinguish certain combats more decisive than the others. There were the conflicts in Berlin—of December against the Marine Division, of January against the Spartacists, and of March against the Republican Guard and other corps. In the provinces, the expeditions against Bremen, Halle, Brunswick, and Munich. I saw nothing of the first of these, but something of the fall of the revolutionary movements of Halle, Brunswick, and Munich. And with each of these failures ended some distinctive element of the German revolution. With each of these failures the German revolution took a fresh impetus and a more extreme form.

The trouble at Bremen was merely a collision between the centre of the renascent reaction at Berlin and the original source of the revolution among the soldiers and sailors of the seaboard towns. The revolution first broke out at Bremen and was spread from there by parties of sailors who established themselves in the leading towns of the interior, including Berlin; and wherever they settled they became the "Red Guard" of the revolution. Bremen was therefore not only the Bethlehem of the new gospel, but was also the key position to the control of the coast. And this control was indispensable to the Government, which was negotiating with the Allies for the importation of foodstuffs in mitigation of the blockade. For the revolutionary extremists, recognising that the blockade was breeding revolt, kept throwing every difficulty in the way of importing food. They first refused to allow the German steamers to sail under the agreement, and then refused to allow foodstuffs to be unloaded. The Government were thus forced, probably not unwillingly, into military action against the revolution in the interests of famine relief. When Gerstenberg's flying column occupied Bremen in February with little serious fighting, the revolutionary policy of barring off Germany from the conservative West and turning it towards the Council government of Russia finally failed. The desperate plan of strangling and starving Germany into revolution was defeated by the German middle class, who preferred, even at the cost of immediate civil war, to go into economic slavery to France and England rather than to go into political outlawry with Russia. The fall of Bremen really finished all immediate chances of Russian "Bolshevism" in Germany.

The Halle affair in March was a less crucial business, though critical enough for a time. The Saxon towns had been in a state of economic unrest that increased as the impotence of the Weimar Assembly became more obvious. Thus the smaller towns in the immediate neighbourhood of Weimar, like Erfurt and Jena, became outposts of revolution, permanently menacing the deliberations of the Assembly in the classic groves of the Ilm. Small bands of revolutionaries even penetrated Weimar itself, until the roads and railways were barred. It was some weeks before the Saxon Frei-Corps of Jagers, under General Maerker, were strong enough to attempt expeditions against the smaller Thuringian towns. And the General himself had, in these early days, more than one narrow escape. His small force was still very weak in numbers and discipline when a general strike was declared at Halle, with the avowed political object of cutting communications between the Legislature at Weimar and the Administration at Berlin. Obviously, if Weimar could be seized, or even surrounded by the revolutionaries, the parliamentary system of government must collapse and a revolutionary Saxony would divide the Prussian bureaucrats from the South German burghers. This plan—if plan it was—and not merely a process of inchoate and unconscious forces, was defeated by the Maerker expedition to Halle; and those who are interested in the outside as well as the inside of political events may learn something of what the civil war in Germany was like in the following diary of my experiences with this expedition.

Friday Afternoon.—The green room of the Weimar Theatre—now the National Assembly—and the War Minister Noske on a sofa, a big beetle-browed, bullet-headed type of German, a Bismarck Mk. II., but evidently underfed and overstrained. On a chair a sharp-nosed intelligence officer, for War Ministers must be careful these days who they see and what they say. After some talk I ask leave to go with the Government troops who are to reopen the rail to Berlin by occupying Halle. The intelligence officer demurs, but Noske good humouredly agrees to my arguments, scribbles a word or two on the back of my card, and hurries off to catch the Berlin train. He will have to spend all night going round by Chemnitz and Dresden.

Friday Midnight.—A fourth-class carriage in the third of three troop trains conveying 4,000 men and 20 guns to Halle. Five of us are perched on the narrow wooden seats; two officers in mufti, and two Halle deputies going as Government delegates, one a brisk little Democrat, the other a patriarchal Social-Democrat, in a long white beard and a broad black hat. We make the best of it. One officer has a candle, the other a stock of war adventures; I have a bottle of wine and a budget of news from outside; the patriarch has sections of an eel and views on the food question, which he roars like a hungry lion. Bump! we are mostly on the floor. The engine of No. 2 has broken down, and we have trodden on and derailed its tail. We pile into train No. 1, and get cushioned seats. The officers snore, the patriarch dozes, rumbling like a distant storm. Only the little Democrat sits brooding. "Oh, Halle! Halle!" he mutters, "that I should ever come to you like this."

Saturday Morning.—The General and I are marching up the road to Halle; behind us officers in mufti, beside us the head of the column of volunteers. The little General is telling me this is the seventh town he and his flying column have occupied, but the first real big one. An expert in Bolshevist busting, this tiny General of a toy army, with the face and manner of a dear demure little old maiden lady. He ignores politely the women and boys, who are shouting, "Bloodhounds!" "Brutes!" "Vultures!" "Vermin!" and salutes scrupulously any burgher bold enough to wave.

So we enter Halle, pass the factories and skyscrapers, where the hands live stacked in tiers, and then occupy the station yard. The General with a few officers and men, marches straight through the great deserted station into the guardroom of the insurgent troops. The guard, taken by surprise, seize their rifles, and some cock and point them, shouting threats. The little General raps out an order like a machine-gun, and after a long half-minute a man drops his rifle, the others follow suit, and all file out—one shouting in a heart-broken voice, "Is this all we can do?" A deputation of sailors arrives, fine upstanding fellows, with intelligent faces. These are the real fighters, and some hundreds of them are occupying a building in the town. They have probably only come to find out what chance there is of holding it, and the guns outside are answer enough, for they leave abruptly. The General sends a summons to evacuate after them, and they have cleared before their building is surrounded. "Those cursed blue boys," says a young officer. "What wouldn't I have done for them during the war, and now they've brought us to this."

Saturday Afternoon.—The General with a few officers and a half-company, is walking down to the Town Hall to arrange with the local authorities. I am congratulating him on everything being so well over—and add, as I see the market-place ahead packed with people and ugly-looking roughs hooting us—that in England things would be about going to begin. I've hardly said it before they do begin. The crowd, annoyed at the hauling down of the red flag and hoisting of the red, white, and black, storms the Town Hall, tears the machine-guns and rifles from our guard there, and smashes them, seizes a motor and an ambulance, which it afterwards runs blazing into the river, and carries off two officers, whom it shuts up in the Red Tower, a mediæval fortress. They then turn on our little party, which is in rapid retreat on the Post Office, but we stand them off until we are behind the iron gates. An angry mob howls outside, but when they get to shaking or scaling the gates a movement from the sentries inside is enough still to stop them. At last reinforcements arrive, forcing their way through the crowd, which, however, falls on the last files and tries to haul them off. We sally out and pull them in, shouting to the soldiers, now as angry as the mob, not to shoot. But already there comes the crack of rifles and the rattle of a machine-gun from another position up the street. Firing becomes general. The crowd scatters in all directions, and the empty streets round are picketed with machine-guns. The General, regardless of roof snipers, comes round, patting his young soldiers on the back. "Well," says he to me, "here we are, and the only question is, are we holding Halle or is Halle holding us?"

Saturday Evening.—A long table in the Post Office. At one end the little General, behind him two officers, one smiling, the other scowling. On his right the two "Independent" tribunes of the people, representing the workmen's councils, beyond them commandants of the local barracks, at the foot representatives of the burgher committee and the little Democrat, on the General's left representatives of the soldiers' council, probably students. The Patriarch has, however, disappeared, the march of events having been too rapid for him. The General is very short with the student soldiers, and very urbane with the Independent politicians who are or were in control of Halle—one is another Bismarck type, Mk. III. this time, the other a Bernard Shaw Mk. II. A strong combination of authority with audacity; but I doubt the General with his steel-helmeted troops and machine-guns will be stronger. Their case is that they kept order until the troops came, and they can only restore it if the troops go. The General and the burgher delegates accuse them of arming and agitating the proletariat, which they indignantly deny. The discussion is interrupted at intervals by the irruption of dingy individuals, who report disorders and discoveries, and I suspect the General of having realised the dramatic value of the messenger in Greek tragedy. Finally, the two tribunes agree to put out posters that the troops have nothing to do with the strike, and must be let alone. This negative result horrifies the burghers, and the General, leaving the table, is besieged by earwigging notables imploring him to arrest the two tribunes. "I saw them leaving the house that fired the first shot," hisses a flabby frock-coated party with a grog-blossomy nose. "Bernard Shaw" overhears him, but only strokes his thin beard and his moustaches curl in a cynical smile. He knows the General knows his business.

Saturday Midnight.—I've been out and in through the pickets and among the armed parties of the other side several times, and a major in mufti and I are going out to a hotel. Two journalists who've made their way in, and regret it, decide to follow us. Nearing the cleared street, we turn up a side street and come right on an armed party. The journalists, a few paces behind, bolt round the corner, which leads to our being stopped and questioned. I engage their attention all I can to give the major a chance of slipping off, which he wisely does. Unfortunately, this gives time for a larger crowd to gather than I can manage, and they march me off to the market-place, where they become a mob. Ugly roughs and excited boys keep pressing in, and several have seen me with the General. The ring round me gets savage, and I have increasing difficulty in keeping those round me quiet. A man shouts at me in Russian, asking whether I'm from Joffe. I repudiate Joffe, but knowing Russian gets me a friend or two. One calls up some armed sailors and persuades them to take me to their guard-house. A plucky little burgher who has been appearing and disappearing in the welter attaches himself to the party. The crowd follows until a machine-gun opens near by and scatters it. Our party gets smaller each time we run or shelter from the machine-guns, which are playing on the plundering parties. I find the burgher will take me in if I get rid of the escort, so, distributing some small notes, I suggest we should all be better off at home. Some agree, others object, but a machine-gun closures the debate without a division and I spend the night on the friendly burgher's sofa.

Sunday Morning.—I hear from the burgher that an aide-de-camp of the General caught by the mob in mufti with the General's orders in his pocket, soon after my escape, has been thrown into the river and shot as he swam. The town is still in the hands of the revolutionaries, but quite quiet except round the buildings held by the troops. After changing my appearance and borrowing the burgher's hat, I go round in a crowd of Sunday sightseers staring at the looted shops and the bullet-starred houses. Near the Post Office there is sniping from the roofs, and a hand grenade is thrown almost on top of us. There are ugly red blotches in the streets among the broken glass. Running the gauntlet of the pickets, I find the General very glad to see me. The scowling officer shows me a sniper behind a chimney-pot who has just shot the smiling officer. The situation militarily and politically is temporarily at a deadlock, and the only interest in staying is the risk of being sniped in the Post Office or mobbed in the town. The General offers me a passage to Weimar with the "flying post."

Sunday Afternoon.—The Halle flying ground. While one of the few planes left is being patched up the officer is telling me of his difficulties. He daren't leave the men alone for an hour. The plane with the post for Weimar I travel with has to be represented as going to Magdeburg, or the men might stop its starting. He holds on because the planes are indispensable to the Government, but when he came back from the front, and the orders and badges were torn from his coat, "something broke in him." His family has always been military, but now it's over, and he is going to the Argentine. But my pilot is tougher stuff. A man of the middle class, pilot since 1912, fighting scout through the war, a friend of the great fliers and of Fokker, he had had good openings abroad. "But no," says he; "Germany's going down out of control, but if it crashes I crash with it."

So after careful scrutiny to see that nothing has been half sawn through, as it was a few days before, we climb in. The roar of the motor drowns the distant rattle of the machine-guns, and Halle disappears below into the dusk as we drive into the red glare of the setting sun.

Germany at this time was like a seething pot. Outbreaks such as that at Halle were only bubbles breaking out on the surface. At any moment one expected the whole heaving, simmering mass to boil over. But, wherever a centre of ebullition declared itself the Government quenched the upheaval with a douche of Frei-Corps.

Such a centre from the first days of revolution was Brunswick. Indeed, Brunswick had been such a centre of disturbance from the earliest days of German history. The chronicles of Brunswick show the workmen of that town always in the van not only of German but of European movements. They were indeed Bolsheviks as early as 1292; and it was largely owing to the improvement in the workmen's position that they forced on the German towns in the following century that the general risings of the proletariat, that led to civil war in England and France, were in Saxony comparatively bloodless.[1]

And, as soon as the revolution broke out in the North Sea Coast towns, Brunswick gave it its first welcome to the interior. Bodies of sailors, travelling up from the coast as the vanguard of revolution, had established it in Brunswick, the day after the first outbreak at Wilhelmshaven; and thereafter Brunswick threw itself wholeheartedly into a real revolutionary régime.

The little State of Brunswick consists of the mediæval town and a ring of industrial suburbs separate from the town, with satellite rural townlets and villages. The political life and vital heat of Brunswick centre now in this mushroom ring of factories, where the old rebel character of the State is more truly reproduced than among the burghers and bauers of the dead town and dormant villages. Under pressure from the workmen in these factories Brunswick established a government that, unlike that of Berlin, was sufficiently revolutionary to attempt to realise the social revolution. When the inevitable split came between the Social-Democrats in power and the Independents in opposition, Brunswick declared for the Independents. The free Republic of Brunswick became a citadel of the Independent extremists, a centre of revolutionary propaganda and a corpus vile for the application of revolutionary principles. And it was unfortunate that it made itself so obnoxious to its big neighbour, Berlin, in its first two characters that its services in the third capacity were overlooked. For Brunswick was working out a régime which was in fact a compromise between the revolutionary institutions of council government and the established parliamentary system of its constitutional Government. True parliamentary institutions had under the leadership of extremists like Merges been relegated rather to the background. But they had not been abolished and remained ready to function, when required, as a sort of Second Chamber and conservative counterbalance to the radical régime of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils. Nor had this régime so far as I could ascertain done any irremediable material harm, while it had certainly done real moral service. The propertied and professional classes had been alarmed certainly; but had learnt to defend themselves very effectively by strikes and refusal of taxes, and had thereby obtained recognition of their rights as a numerical minority. Feeling, of course, ran high; but the freedom of speech of the burghers was never curtailed while the workmen's party was in power. Of course, the workmen's leader, the hunchback tailor Merges, was represented as a sort of ogre throughout Germany, but the Brunswick burghers rather despised than dreaded him. Their opinion of the rule of the "Arbeiter Rat," or Workmen's Board, is expressed in these lines pasted on the pedestal of the equestrian statue representing Duke William of ever pious and still immortal memory (obiit, 1884).

As reaction developed at Berlin and revolution at Brunswick it became evident that once again in its history a bullying Berlin would bash a bumptious Brunswick. This simple solution as between the two centres of the main conflict that has divided Germany was delayed by cross complications coming from conflicts belonging to another plane, and to an older chapter. Brunswick town, unlike Halle or Hamburg, was a free Republic—more than that it was a semi-sovereign State. The semi-sovereign rights of the lesser German States were one of the ancient bulwarks used by the reactionary government as defences against a levelling revolution. They were particularly dear to the Centrum supporters of the Government as the temporal entrenchments of the Clerical position. And so the free and Independent republicans of Brunswick had a longer lease of power than might have been expected.

Finally, political and personal considerations combined to overcome the reluctance of the Berlin Government to take military action against a Free State. As usual the personal factor probably forced the decision and the incident throws a sidelight on German politics of this period.

Magdeburg, an industrial town on the main line between Berlin and Brunswick and on the borders of Brunswick State, had been a political stronghold of Majoritarian Social-Democracy. But it had been so affected by the drift of the workmen to the left that by the end of April the Independents believed they had a majority in that parliamentary constituency. Now the representative of this constituency was the moving spirit, the Machiavelli, of the ministry—Landsberg. This Polish Jew has already been referred to as the brains of the Government. He, as representing Majoritarian Social Democracy and Erzberger as representing middle-class Clericalism, were the cement of the coalition between Social-Democracy and the Centrum, a coalition based on love of office and fear of the Opposition. So Landsberg finding his own seat threatening defection to the Opposition and joining a general strike of the Saxon towns, went down to Magdeburg. But on his arrival he was seized by the revolutionaries, put in a car, and sent off to Brunswick to be held to ransom. This kidnapping of the reactionary Minister of Justice, second only to Noske himself in importance, was a score for the revolution. But a red Jew is kittle cattle to drive. Landsberg escaped from his captors, and within a few days General Maerker and his merry men were marching on Magdeburg from Halle. Magdeburg was occupied after slight resistance, and became the base for operations against Brunswick. Only a casus belli was required and this was supplied when Brunswick, encouraged by the Munich revolution, proclaimed a "Räte Republik," and invited the Saxon towns to rally to the revolution and the "Soviet system." This was immediately countered by the officials and clerks of Brunswick organising a strike that crippled the Prussian railway and the German postal and telegraph system. Whereupon Berlin declared that it had ground for intervention in Brunswick, the State frontier was closed and Frei-Corps expeditions advanced from Magdeburg and Hanover. Skirmishes occurred at Helmstadt, Borsum and Wolfenbüttel and both sides had losses. Brunswick called off the general strike, protested against the violation of State right and tried to make terms. There followed a pause in the operations during which the moderates on both sides were trying to arrange matters. Meantime the Communists and Council revolutionaries of Brunswick were preparing resistance, in the confidence that the revolutionaries of the Saxon towns would rise in the rear of the troops; while the reactionaries were mobilising rapidly tanks and howitzers with the intention of giving the Revolution the coup de grâce. It was at this moment that I decided to go to Brunswick partly to study its revolutionary institutions before they were wiped out, partly to prevent bloodshed if possible by informing the revolutionary leaders as to the small prospect of Brunswick, if it resisted, getting any support from Saxony or Prussia. It was not an easy journey and the following account of it from my diary may serve as an illustration of Germany at this time.

Monday Evening.—The notorious Eden Hotel, headquarters of the Berlin garrison and military police. I am waiting for a permit to go with the expedition against Brunswick. When I went with the same troops against Halle a month ago I got my permit from Noske himself, but the captain in charge at the Eden Hotel is only second in real importance to the War Minister. There is, I suppose, a War Office and General Staff still, with generals and colonels, but the Government is based on the volunteer corps and they are run from the Eden Hotel. And now Brunswick, not for the first time, has championed the cause of German revolution and challenged Berlin, which has become, not for the first time, the centre of German reaction. And Berlin has determined to bash the head of revolution in Brunswick as it broke its back in Halle. True, Brunswick is a free State with its own constitution, which only differs from that of Prussia in preserving the principles of the November revolution; but it has become a centre of revolutionary opposition connecting the industrial districts of Westphalia with those of Saxony. There has been a plan for concerted action. Brunswick has given the signal too soon and realised its mistake too late. Brunswick, says the Eden Hotel, will fight in the hope of support from the Saxon towns, not knowing that they will not rise, for it has been isolated for a week.

Tuesday Morning.—A fourth-class carriage in the "parliamentary" to Magdeburg. There are third-class carriages, but a haversack on the floor is more comfortable than a straight-backed wooden bench. But imagine traffic between London and Derby reduced to three trains daily, two of which stop at every station. A peasant woman sitting on a sack is complaining:—"We get up at four every morning and work till dark. The cabbages and potatoes lie at the stations for days; the sun shines on them, the rain rains on them, and they rot—no trains—so we starve in the fields and you starve in the towns. A burgher frau tells how a barge load of American wheat has arrived at her town—"but what use is it at that price?" A man explains the high price is only for the extra ration and that most of it goes to make up the old ration at the old rate. "But," objects another, "we shall have to pay for it all the same, and we can't." "Emigration, that's what it means," says a soldier. "Why emigrate?" says a young man—"socialisation and Council Government are what's wanted, then the workmen will work and we can pay." You can hear more sound politics and economics now in fourth-class carriages than at Weimar, for hunger is the best political education. But—"Oh, politics, always politics now," protests a pretty girl The soldier gallantly responds and the debate becomes a Beatrice and Benedict duel, altogether too Shakespearean to report.

Tuesday Evening.—The General's headquarters. I hand my friend the General my credentials from my right-hand pocket, in my left are letters to Brunswick leaders. Public disorder makes for personal orderliness, and getting passes mixed in his pockets cost an officer acquaintance of mine his life lately. The General tells me he is marching against Brunswick—horse, foot and artillery—next evening. I can go ahead in the armoured train or an armoured car. But I explain this time I want to see the occupation from the other side and so must get into Brunswick well ahead. However, the General doesn't respond to my request to be set down outside Brunswick from one of the aeroplanes employed in distributing proclamations. Brunswick has been cut off by road and rail for days, and he evidently prefers it should remain so. Brunswick, he says, means to fight and must get a sharp lesson. Anyway it's impossible for anyone to get in now. And at first sight one would say he was right. Brunswick is sixty miles from Magdeburg by rail, trains only run in other directions, and even for them one must have a permit. All planes and cars are under control of the troops. So it will have to be the "underground railway" for me. For, when you drive a revolution underground it won't be long before there's an underground railway. It's quite easy even for a foreigner without local friends to get down the lifts and along the passages to it, provided he can find the way in. And a good place to look for the entrance is a newspaper office.

Wednesday Morning.—A back room in a beerhouse of a back street in Magdeburg. I am being booked through to Brunswick on the underground. The "tickets" are being made out among the slops and my guide is getting his instructions. For all tours on the underground are personally conducted.

Wednesday Evening.—A beerhouse in a back street of Brunswick. We have run the blockade successfully, and are waiting to be sent for by the revolutionary government. We reached Brunswick soon after dark, having travelled hard all day. First, leaving Magdeburg by train and going north, we got out at a wayside station where a carriage and pair was waiting. This drove us at a great pace over the rolling uplands to the outskirts of a village. Whom it belonged to I didn't hear, but it had the best pair of horses I saw in Germany. Next came a sharp run across country to a halt on a local steam tramway, which took us down to a junction where we got a train. The train had to be left unostentatiously en route. Fortunately, German trains don't go very fast nowadays; but standing on the end platform and waiting to jump while my Communist guide turned somersaults on the embankment, I should have preferred even my lop-winged Halle aeroplane to the Brunswick "underground." Another walk to a local station from which a train ran backwards and forwards to Brunswick. As we arrived it came up loaded with refugees who were retiring to country farms to escape the imminent invasion of the Prussian troops.

Wednesday Midnight.—Government House Brunswick.—The town is plunged in darkness but the Government building is all ablaze with lights and a-bustle with figures hurrying to and fro past the lighted windows. Inside there is a curious nightmare feeling of hampered haste and of imminent menace. Round a long table in an upper room sits a sort of council of war distractedly discussing whether Brunswick shall resist the Prussian troops that are due to arrive at dawn. In a sort of drawing-room adjoining, other members of the Independent Government sit about listlessly in fauteuils brought over from the palace, or pace restlessly about the room. A Communist is trying to spur the Council on to fight, assuring them that the soldiers and sailors are ready to face the tanks and trench mortars—which is true, and that the workmen will support them—which is not. A sailor suddenly appears in the Council room excitedly waving an object in his hand which it seems is a bomb that has just been found hidden in the cellars—but whether intended to blow up the revolutionaries or to be subsequently found by the reactionaries and exploited as an "atrocity" is not clear. Anyway, no one pays any attention to him, and annoyed at this he proceeds to take it to pieces to prove it's a real bomb. I persuade him to go away and drown it.

Soon after the Council decide not to fight. This definite decision wakes us all up from the nightmare. Telephone orders are at once sent out to the outposts, everyone hurries off on some mission, and as we go home the dark alleys are full of dim hastening groups hauling heavy objects—machine-guns and rifles to be thrown into the river or buried.

Thursday Morning.—A hotel window looking on the main square. I am taking down the history of revolutionary Brunswick from the dictation of one of the leading revolutionaries, while below the Prussian troops are marching in. The organisation of the Independent Government has made good in its last crisis and not a shot has been fired, to the openly expressed disappointment of the invaders. The hotel, awkwardly enough, has been commandeered as an auxiliary headquarters, and I have to escort my informant out past groups of officers and see him safely away into the "underground railway." He is one of the few wanted men who get clean away. Merges and others escaping in aeroplanes and in cars are with few exceptions caught. Merges himself, subsequently, is released by friendly jailers.

The burghers in the streets exult at their deliverance and some of the girls throw flowers to the troops. A young volunteer in an armoured car catches a bunch gracefully and I recognise him as a scion of the princely house of Reuss. At the back of the crowd stalwart men in ill-fitting civilian clothes glower gloomily. A girl at an attic window in a side street cries shrill abuse at the "steel helmets" and one boy in joke points his rifle at her. It goes off, the bullet stars the plaster and the boy looks as terrified as the girl. It is the only shot fired at the fall of the Free Republic of Brunswick.

Thursday Evening.—The General has deposed the Government of Independents and set up another of Majoritarians, has arrested all the leaders he can find and has proclaimed the severest form of martial law. Many burghers are already regretting the revolutionary régime. The streets are almost deserted for it is already dusk and no one may be out of doors after sundown. In the shadows under the overhanging gables of the mediæval market-place gleams the steel helm of a Prussian picket. Other cloaked and helmed figures gather round a fire down a side street. Brunswick is back in the Middle Ages and these might be Tilly's men. A fat burgher creeps cautiously past the hotel. Every evening for years he has trotted to the cosy beer cellar round the corner. Shall these bedamned Prussians keep a free Brunswicker from his beer. After several false starts he marches boldly out across the market. Bang goes a blank cartridge from the Prussian sentry and the burgher bolts back into obscurity. The liberty of Brunswick is no more.

The establishment of a Räte Republik at Munich got more attention than the Brunswick attempt but was really less interesting because less indigenous. The relative importance of the two was more accurately assessed at Berlin. Berlin has always had a difficulty in taking Munich politics seriously. It has had to recognise its superiority in Art and Literature, but compensates itself in matters political by an amused arrogance not unlike the attitude of London to Dublin. But Munich is not Bavaria. If it were, the Prussians and Wurtembergers would never have ventured to interfere; for the Bavarian is far too fierce a fighter and too jealous of his freedom for all the rest of Germany to coerce him as a nation. However, it soon became evident that Munich Communism represented only a section of the Munich workmen and was resented by Bavaria as a whole, with the exception of the proletariat in the large industrial towns. Even so, the Berlin Government acted cautiously. It was indeed in a difficult position; for the policy that Scheidemann's socialism stood for was one of compromise with political clericalism and provincial particularism. His minister, Preuss, then framing the constitution, had been reluctantly compelled to reject the conception of the more radical reformers who had hoped to found a wholly uniform and wholly united centralised German Socialist State. The Government had been forced to use the political jealousies of the German States and the clerical prejudices of the Centrum as weapons against the social revolution. It would not be too much to say of this period of German politics that only the revolutionary adherents of the Council movement were Germans; while the upper and middle classes had again become Prussians, Saxons or Bavarians. And now it had become necessary to coerce the capital of Bavaria, the centre of Roman Catholicism and the most sensitive and important of the minor kingdoms. And this, too, at the very time when everything was being done to induce German-Austria, Bavaria's neighbour, to accept the same sort of position in the Realm as that held by Bavaria. It was a most awkward predicament and the German Government showed less than its usual tactlessness in dealing with it. It arranged with the Bavarian bourgeois Government, when matters came to a crisis at Munich, that it should take refuge at Bamberg, where it could be protected by the Government's troops centred at Weimar. Then it arranged with Würtemberg and Baden to supply troops to restore this Bamberg ancien régime, supporting them with Saxons and, at first, keeping the Prussian corps in the background. Operations were then begun, first against the Franconian towns of North Bavaria, where Bavarian sentiment was weak. Any attempt against Munich was delayed until a raging Press propaganda against the rule of the Munich Bolshevists in the Wittelsbach Palais, and the crushing of the movement everywhere else, had excited the class feeling of the propertied farmers and burghers and had exorcised temporarily Bavarian jealousy of Prussia. All this, however, would not have ensured Berlin success, but for the inherent weakness of the Munich revolutionaries. The movement for Council Government and general Communism had lost all chance of success when it was forced either by the policy of its enemies or by the jealousies of its supporters into the hands of men like the Russian extremists, Leviné and Levien.

I saw a good deal of both men during my stay in Munich a few days before their fall, and both were very frank as to the hopelessness of their position. They were very different. Leviné was a black Jew of a common and rather criminal type, with a bad record, but great ability of a sort. Levien was a cosmopolitan and a Bohemian—in appearance and abilities a dissolute and demoralised version—a Bohemian and Bolshevist caricature—of the Treasury official who now represents us and rules Germany on the Reparation Commission.

A curious picture it was this Communist dictatorship in the Wittelsbach palace. Outside—crowds of workmen waiting for the posting of the bulletins in which decrees were proclaimed. Inside—a great coming and going of seedy-looking revolutionaries—a frantic clattering of typewriters pounded by unkempt girls—hurried conclaves in corners—remains of meals on marble tables—the dubious atmosphere of a Quartier Latin garret—the high pressure of a Bolshevist headquarters and the melancholy madness of a Wittelsbach pavilion.

The political situation in Bavaria after the revolution had rested entirely on the personal power of the idealist Jew, Kurt Eisner. His influence over both revolutionaries and reformers produced in Munich a coalition of Socialists in which the predominant element was progressive; whereas in Berlin, for want of any such personality the coalition split up into reactionaries and revolutionaries. The assassination of Eisner and the disablement of Auer on 21st February were succeeded by some weeks of the Hoffmann Government during which the issue as between parliamentary and council government was defining itself. The distribution of force at this time appears from a division in the Assembly of Councils where the proclamation of a Räte-Republik (a Council State) was outvoted by 230 to 70; Levien himself, the Bolshevist, declaring against it as premature. But during March the strong movement to the left and towards a Council constitution, noticeable in the Berlin Räte-Congress, made apparently even greater progress in the Bavarian industrial towns. Majority-Socialists, the Social-Democrats, found their followers going over en masse to the Independents, while the latter lost equally heavily to the Communists. In Prussia the Majoritarians had made up for this loss of popular support by creating a military force strong enough to resist any attempt to overthrow them by other than constitutional means. But in Bavaria the Majority party found itself being left in the air. It seems thereupon to have adopted a policy of outbidding its opponents. At Augsburg, late in March, Niekisch, a leading Majoritarian, declared for a Räte-Republik exclusive of Parliament, and succeeded in getting it voted. The vote was later rescinded under influence of the Independents and Communists, but restored under Majoritarian pressure. The same curious reversal of rôles followed in Munich, where a Majoritarian, Thomas, pressed for a Räte-Republik. A commission of Left Majoritarians and Right Independents was appointed on April 4th and adopted a programme including the dictatorship of the working class, the organisation of a council system on an industrial and professional basis, the socialisation of industries, banks, and land, the revolutionising of administrative, judicial, and educational systems, the separation of Church and State, compulsory work for all classes, the formation of a Red Army, and alliance with Hungary and Russia.

This programme was to be executed by a Central Council and Commissioners, equally composed of Independents, Communists, and Social-Democrats. At first the Communists refused to join and attacked the new Government bitterly as a humbug; but later, after proclamation of the Räte-Republik and a Council constitution, agreed to co-operate in the Central Council in an advisory capacity. The Räte-Republik was proclaimed on April 7th. The Hoffmann Government left; but soon after reappeared, first at Nuremberg and then at Bamberg, where it established itself as a sort of Bavarian Weimar. The Berlin Government at once refused recognition to the new régime, while it gave every countenance and support to the Bamberg Government.

A few days later, Sunday the 13th, a "putsch" under the leadership of a ci-devant, von Seifertitz, and a Majoritarian, Löwenfeld, supported by the Republican Schutztruppe, overthrew this Government and arrested the Independent members of the Central Council, as also Mühsam, a non-partisan idealist. The Communists then took immediate action and a hundred or so armed workmen under Toller, a young Independent officer, ejected as many soldiers from the railway station at the cost of two killed and a few wounded and some broken windows—a scuffle represented in Berlin as a desperate battle in which the station and surrounding houses had been completely destroyed. The Communists then formed a "Bolshevist" Government under Commissioners, among whom were included the Russians Levien and Leviné, and an Executive Council, on which were two Independents and a moderate, Maenner—an able man in charge of finance.

Of course in this curious chasser-croiser it is open to anyone to regard the Majoritarians as mere governmental agents provocateurs, working for a premature proclamation of the Räte-Republik, with such motives as it may suit the critic to attribute to them. This was the view taken by the Times; but personally I am inclined to see merely the manœuvring of demagogues ambitious of power, in a people with little political experience. To retain power, the Majoritarian Socialists of Prussia were prepared to re-introduce militarism; while those of Bavaria were prepared to introduce "Bolshevism" for the same object.

Both the course and the collapse of Munich Communism give an answer to the question whether Russian Bolshevism can take root in Germany. If Bolshevism meant Sovietism and merely is a constitutional conflict between parliamentary and council government, it could. There is no such traditional belief in the parliamentary system in Germany as to make it an essential foundation of constitutional government. Neither the old Berlin Reichstag nor the Weimar Assembly acquired popular confidence. But if by Bolshevism we mean an economic class conflict concerning the dictatorship of the proletariat, the answer seems to be that it cannot be established in Germany, under normal conditions.

The short life of the Munich Commune seemed to show this. The Government consisted of Commissioners—a sort of inner Cabinet, an Executive Council—a sort of Ministry, and an Assembly of Councils—the Legislature. The first was Bolshevist, in general standpoint, the second Independent Socialist and Moderate Communist, the third predominantly Moderate Socialist. The Commissioners, especially the Russians, did not enjoy the confidence of the Assembly, still less of the garrison. I believe that they would soon have been replaced by a Socialist régime, but for the military action of Prussia and Würtemberg.

Nor were the measures taken by this régime what could be called Bolshevist. The absurd newspaper yarns, reproducing all the old calumnies against Russian Council Government, including the communisation of women, gave quite a false impression. I have a complete list of the Communist measures, and they contain nothing very sensational and mostly existed anyway only on paper. I will give two examples which I heard discussed before the Assembly. The cafés chantants, a great feature of Munich, had all been closed on moral grounds, not without justification, as those who know Munich will admit. The delegates of the employés appealed against this as throwing three thousand people out of work. The debate showed that this measure was largely a protest of the workmen against the irregular lives of the Communist leaders themselves, and the cafés were allowed to re-open under the control of a committee of the Assembly. Further, the middle-class papers had been suspended by the Commissioners. So representatives of the Communist and Independent papers rose to say they would suspend publication until this prohibition was removed. This threat was carried out and at the time I left the prohibition was about to be repealed.

As to the practical results of the Bolshevist régime it was difficult to judge from the two or three weeks it was running; all the more that half this time was passed in the general strike proclaimed by the Communists which they could not prevent after their accession to power. But after work was resumed it was clear that conditions were normal. Order was not disturbed and the revolutionary tribunal as to which wild stories were told was a mild affair. It was even recognised by the local bar—and when an agent of the Anti-Bolshevist League was caught with false Communist papers and large funds he was only fined the amount in his possession. Telegraph officials, accomplices of a spy in running a secret telegraphic service to Nuremberg, were acquitted as only irresponsible agents. Russian Bolshevism would have given them a short shrift. The only practical difference between Communist Munich and Independent Brunswick was that the Munich revolutionaries not having the hearty support of the garrison had to form volunteer corps of Red Guards. These, like the Government volunteers, were highly paid and fed, the means being provided partly by money confiscated as illegal remittances abroad, partly by printing new notes. The extent of the attempted exportation of money may be guessed from the thousand mark note, the only convenient means of exportation, having been worth fourteen hundred marks. The removal of the note printing presses to Bamberg embarrassed the Communists for a time, but they had succeeded while I was there in printing twenty mark notes, which were, of course, declared worthless by the German Government.

At the time I left Munich the garrison had declared in favour of negotiating with the expeditions menacing Munich from Augsburg and Ingolstadt, and the workmen, though against negotiating with the troops, would clearly have welcomed a peaceful solution even at the cost of expelling the Russians. This I was able to report to the Premier Hoffmann at Bamberg, whom I found under the impression that negotiations were hopeless. Three days later, they were opened at his invitation at Nuremberg, but led to nothing, as the workmen would not agree to disarm. The troops accordingly marched in, driving the "red army" before them; and Munich, less happy in its leaders than Brunswick, became the scene of the usual sniping and skirmishing by insurgents with machine-gunning and bombarding by the troops. The influence of the Russians was probably responsible for one particularly ugly incident, the cold-blooded murder of a number of "hostages" in reprisal for the wholesale shooting of prisoners by the troops. Leviné, the leading member of the Russian clique, was captured and shot and several less dangerous and even quite harmless revolutionary or Radical leaders also perished, some "by accident." Levien was arrested some months later but escaped to Vienna. The new Bavarian Ministry, or rather the old Bamberg Government restored, then took on the same character as the Ministry in Berlin; that is a Government by military force behind a Moderate Socialist façade.

The failure of the revolution in Munich was its last effort in this first volume of the German revolution. The movement thereafter adopted Leipzig as its centre, an Independent stronghold; but when later the Government picked a quarrel with Leipzig, occupied it with troops and abolished its Independent régime, there was no resistance.