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.