To-day a few girls were there wandering sadly through the silent woods, pale ghosts of dead delights, and there was no sound but the sighing of the pines—
"Sair moaning in ilka green loaning,
The flowers o' the forest are a' wede awa'."
CHAPTER III[ToC]
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.