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.