Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
Now approaches a great procession of men and women, silent, sad, slow-moving, sombre-hued save for the red banners which here and there droop into the ranks and show through the trees like gouts of blood. It is the Spartacusbundes Party, with Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg at their head. They are doubtless come to mourn their dead of yesterday and to demand redress and revenge. The procession winds its way through the paths, and ultimately the speakers take up position beside the statue of one of the Margraves, where Liebknecht’s father agitated before him in less agitated times than these.
Liebknecht speaks now, fiercely and with arms outflung and disturbed as the leafless branches of the trees which form a background. There is a wild scream and the crowd commences to stampede. The motor-waggons of the Security Service of the Social Democratic Party are coming up, grim and grinning with machine-guns. A terrified crowd is a very terrible thing.
My last experience of its blind whirl and bewilderment was when the Germans shelled Béthune with big guns at long range on a market Monday of August, 1916. We looked like having trouble now. “Through force of habit they will doubtless take their sighting shots on us,” I said to Tim.
The soldiers have had orders, however, not to shoot unless they were attacked, and the crowd gradually regains reassurance. Standing on the outskirts of the throng, I bought an album of views of Berlin from a poor little girl, and immediately after a similar collection from an old woman equally poor and equally insistent.
My last recollection of Liebknecht is of a gesticulating volcanic figure, and of a livid face, with the wild eyes and the distorted mouth of a Greek tragic mask. He was killed a few weeks later, within a few hundred yards of where we heard him speak.
We have during the day made incursions to various cafés, the “Victoria,” and the one-time very cosmopolitan “Bauer.” In this last, at just an hour before train time we are seated, at question whether, our adventure having proved so successful so far, it be not financially possible to carry it into another day. We decide that if we go fasting during the morrow—a proceeding familiarity with which has rendered not too fearful—-we shall have purses sufficient to pay for a bed in the hotel, and our return fares to Beeskow.
We have been sitting meanwhile amid a cheerless concourse. The people enter, take their refreshment without any appearance of refreshing, and so depart. “See,” says a Russian, just released from Ruhleben, who has entered into conversation, “how they are dazed; how they are dreaming! All of Germany is as a great empty building!”
The streets are crowded, and there is much excitement in the air. Outside the Friedrichstrasse Station we make purchase of a series of severe caricatures of the Kaiser, watched by quite a crowd who seem to recognize the irony of the situation. We have no difficulty in getting into a hotel, and we make no delay in getting into a very inviting bed.
A CARICATURE OF THE KAISER.
Bought in the streets of Berlin.