The six months I spent in Germany were none too much to realise the radical and rapid changes going on; and I can see how difficult it has been for English readers to get an idea of what is really happening there from the little that has been written about it. They cannot do so at all unless they clear their minds of the cartoons and caricatures and clichés forced on them during the last five years by the propaganda and the Press. It is no use drawing Germany from the life for people who still have before their eyes the "Boches" and "Bolsheviks" of Punch and John Bull. One has, indeed, to clear away two strata of misrepresentation, that of our Government and Press and that of the German Government and Press; for the latter is as much opposed to the German revolution as the former.
It would have been better for Germany had it shown more courage and collapsed less completely last autumn. A few weeks' patient endurance under punishment in a losing fight would have gone far towards restoring it some measure of the sympathies of the civilised world. While the consequent occupation of the whole country would have brought us into direct contact with the German revolution, and would have prevented the fatal split between reformers and revolutionaries, between Majority and Independent Socialists. As it was, we English were left to draw such conclusions as we could from the reports of the few correspondents who penetrated to Berlin. But, with two exceptions, the English Press could at this time publish nothing about Germany that was not merely malevolent. And of the few Englishmen in Berlin as correspondents in January, almost all were replaced before the Treaty of Peace by foreign Jews who would supply the sort of propaganda poppycock with which public opinion is still being poisoned.
What people in England wanted to know was whether the German revolution was a real riddance of the evil we had been fighting and a real renascence of good that we could favour; whether it had gone far enough and deep enough to be a sincere repentance and a sufficient remediation. For, unless Germany was born again, it could not enter the community of nations, and until it did so, there could be no true peace.
They could guess that Kaiserism was dead and gone and Junkerism down and out. But even so picturesque and positive an event as the fall of Kaiserism had been only baldly mentioned in a bare telegram of a line or two. How could the British public realise that the Black Eagle of Prussia was no Phœnix and that the blaze of November 9 had left nothing of it but a bad odour and a white feather.
But in Berlin there could be no doubt. Kaiserism was dead—deader even than Tsarism—because the Kaiser was still alive. His shot-shattered and mob-swept palace was the only reminder of him. And every Berliner had more or less vivid recollections of his fall, recollections too lamentable, too ludicrous, to allow of any restoration of the Kaiser legend even now.
After reading your morning paper about revolution in Dublin and revolt in Glasgow and reconstruction in London, as you walk down to your office past the Dutch decorum of Kensington Palace, the Scotch skimpiness of St. James's, or the generous Germanosities of Buckingham Palace, does it ever occur to you to wonder what goes on in a palace when there is a revolution?
Well, this is what happened to the Kaiserschloss in Berlin on November 8.
The curious crowd that always collects outside the house of anyone mentioned in the papers, whether it's an absconded postmaster or an abdicated potentate, found that the sentries no longer challenged them, and first filtered, then flooded into the inner courts. Thereupon the police and guards left, and the palace remained in charge only of the Kastellan and a few servants and soldiers. All doors were kept locked, and beyond some shouting everything was orderly, for the prestige of the Imperial precincts still prevailed.
Then one Schwieringer, not otherwise distinguished, made his way to the Kastellan and got leave to address the crowd from a window. Having draped the balcony with a red cloth borrowed for the purpose, he declared the palace national property. This broke the spell somewhat. The rest of the soldiers left, and the crowd became noisy.
Late in the afternoon came Liebknecht, who engaged another balcony, borrowed more red curtains, made another speech, and after holding a sort of levée in the Throne Room left again. Later came soldiers and hoisted a red flag. So far the Kastellan had remained master of the situation, conducting his unwelcome visitors through the rooms, unlocking and locking behind him as on ordinary occasions with any ordinary tourists.