Haase, speaking for the cabinet, cleverly avoided putting himself on record as to whether or not a national assembly would eventually be called. It could not be called together yet, he said, because preparations must first be made. Election lists must be drawn up and the soldiers in the field must have an opportunity to vote. Moreover, the soldiers, who had been "mentally befogged" by the pan-German propaganda at the front, must be "enlightened" before they could be permitted to vote. Large industries must also be socialized before time could be taken to summon a constituante.
It soon became apparent that the work in the cabinet was not going smoothly. Ebert, Scheidemann and Landsberg, Socialists though they were, lacked any trace of that fanaticism which marks so many Socialist leaders. They were sobered by their new responsibilities. Looked at from above, administrative problems presented a different picture from that which they had when viewed from below by men whose chief rôle had been one of opposition and criticism. Sweeping socialization of all industries, regulation of wages and hours of work, the protection of society against criminals, the raising of revenue, the abolishing of capitalism and capitalists—these things were less simple than they had seemed. To socialize the administration of the state was not difficult, for that was a mechanism which had been built up. But society, as these novices in government now comprehended more clearly than before, is an organism which has grown up. The product of centuries of growth cannot be recklessly made over in a few weeks.
The Majority Socialist trio, realizing the impracticability of tearing down old institutions before there was something better to take their place, moved slowly in instituting reforms. This was little to the liking of the radicals within and without the cabinet. Haase, politician before all else, and Dittmann, class-conscious fanatic, insisted on speedier reforms along orthodox Socialist lines, and particularly on a far-reaching socialization of big industries. Nearly a year earlier Haase, Cohn and Ledebour, attending the notorious Joffe banquet, had approved Bolshevik attacks on the Majority Socialists and excused the slow progress of the revolutionary propaganda by saying that "those—Eberts and Scheidemanns" could not be brought to see reason. It was hardly to be expected that the Independents would be milder now. The work of the cabinet was hampered already, although the Independent members kept up a pretense of working with the old party's representatives.
Haase, Dittmann and Barth were supported by the Vollzugsrat. This body, which had started out by ordering the restoration to their owners of the newspapers seized during the revolution, had so far faced about two days later that Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were able to exhibit to the publishers of the Lokal-Anzeiger an order from the Vollzugsrat directing them to place their plant at the disposal of the Spartacans for the printing of Die rote Fahne, whose editor the Luxemburg woman was to be. The order did not even hint at any compensation for the publishers. Naturally they refused flatly to obey it, and the Greater Berlin Soldiers' Council, still dominated by men of the better sort, meeting two days later, indignantly denounced the action of the Vollzugsrat and compelled the withdrawal of the order.
Despite the fact that the Majority and Independent Socialists were evenly represented on this council, the latter dominated it. Brutus Molkenbuhr, the Majority Socialist co-chairman with Richard Müller was no match for his fanatic colleague, and most of the other members were nobodies of at most not more than average intelligence. A more poorly equipped body of men never ruled any great state, and whatever of good was accomplished by the cabinet in the first month of its existence was accomplished against the opposition of a majority of these men. Müller's radicalism grew daily greater. "The way to a national assembly must lead over my dead body" he declared in a speech filled with braggadocio, and his hearers applauded.
The Soldiers' Council noted with increasing displeasure the drift of the Vollzugsrat toward the left. At the end of November, after a stormy session, the council adopted a resolution expressing dissatisfaction with the attitude of the Vollzugsrat and appointing one representative from each of the seven regiments stationed in Berlin to weigh charges against the executive council and, if necessary, to reform it. The resolution charged the Vollzugsrat with holding secret sessions, usurping powers, grafting, nepotism, [55] failure to take steps to protect the country's eastern border against the aggressions of the Poles and hindering all practical work.
[ [55] A long chapter could be written upon this subject alone. The trail of German revolutionary governments (but not the national cabinet) is slimy with graft, robbery and nepotism. Eichhorn, in the two months that he held the office of Berlin's Police President, made not a single one of the daily reports required of him and never accounted for moneys passing through his hands. Himself drawing salary from Rosta and also as police-president, he appointed his wife to a highly paid clerkship and his young daughter drew a salary for receiving visitors. An Independent Socialist minister's wife drew a large salary for no services. The Vollzugsrat employed a hundred stenographers and messengers who had nothing to do except draw their salaries. The 53er Ausschuss, a committee of marines and soldiers which took entire charge of the admiralty and conducted its affairs without any regard to the national government, voted itself sums larger than had been required to pay all the salaries of the whole department in other days. The police captain of a Berlin suburb, a youthful mechanic, received ninety marks a day, his wife was made a clerk at fifty marks, and he demanded and received an automobile for his private use. The first revolutionary military commandant of Munich tried to defraud a bank of 44,000 marks on worthless paper. The Vollzugsrat never made an honest accounting for the tremendous sums used by it. Hundreds of soldiers' and workmen's committees constituted themselves into soviets in tiny villages and paid themselves daily salaries equaling the highest weekly pay that any of them had ever earned. Robbery through official requisition became so common that the people had to be warned against honoring any requisitions.
The Independent Socialists' ascendancy in the executive body was assured on December 5th, when an election was held to fill two vacancies among the soldier members. Two Independents were chosen, which gave that party sixteen of the council's twenty-eight members.
Even by this time the shift of sentiment in the ranks of Independent Socialism had proceeded to a point where this party's continued ascendancy would have been as great a menace to democratic government as would Liebknecht's Spartacans. Adolph Hoffmann, the party's Prussian Minister of Cults, openly declared that if an attempt were made to summon the national assembly it must never be permitted to meet, even if it had to be dispersed as the Russian Bolsheviki dispersed the constituent assembly in Petrograd, and his pronouncement was hailed with delight by Die Freiheit, the party's official organ in Berlin, and by Independents generally. Emil Eichhorn, who was once one of the editors of Vorwärts but now prominent in the Independent Socialist party, and who had been appointed police-president of Berlin, was on the payroll of Rosta, the Russian telegraph agency which served as a central for the carrying on of Bolshevik propaganda in Germany. He did as much as any other man to make the subsequent fighting and bloodshed in Berlin possible by handing out arms and ammunition to Liebknecht's followers, and by dismissing from the city's Republican Guard—the soldier-policemen appointed to assist and control the policemen—men loyal to the new government.
The Spartacans were feverishly active. Liebknecht and his lieutenants organized and campaigned tirelessly. Der rote Soldatenbund (the Red Soldiers' League) was formed from deserters and criminals and armed with weapons furnished by Eichhorn from the police depots, stolen from government stores or bought with money furnished by Russian agents. The funds received from this source were sufficient also to enable the Spartacan leaders to pay their armed supporters twenty marks a day, a sum which proved a great temptation to many of the city's unemployed whose sufferings had overcome their scruples.