"The money will not be spent for food for Germany itself, because Germany can buy its food, but it will be spent for financing the movement of food to our real friends in Poland and to the people of the liberated units of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and to our associates in the Balkans.
Former Ambassador Henry White, a member of the American peace delegation, supported the President's appeal with a message stating that "the startling westward advance of Bolshevism now dominates the entire European situation. * * * The only effective barrier against it is food-relief."
The House adopted the President's recommendation without question, but the Senate insisted on adding a stipulation that no part of the money should be spent for food for Germany and no food bought with these funds should be permitted to reach that country.
Just how an ulcer in Germany was to be cured by poulticing similar ulcers in other countries is doubtless a statesmen's secret. It is not apparent to non-official minds. Germany, despite her poverty and the depreciation of her currency, might have been able to buy food, but she was not permitted to buy any food. At least one of "the liberated units of the Austro-Hungarian Empire" was in equally bad case. Count Michael Karolyi, addressing the People's Assembly at Budapest, declared that the Allies were not carrying out their part of the armistice agreement in the matter of food-supplies for Hungary, and that it was impossible to maintain order in such conditions. Whether the armistice actually promised to supply food is a matter of interpretation; that no food had been supplied is, however, a matter of history.
On January 17th a supplementary agreement was entered into between the Allies and Germany, in which the former undertook to permit the importation of two hundred thousand tons of breadstuffs and seventy thousand tons of pork products to Germany "in such manner and from such places as the Associated Governments may prescribe." This was but a part of the actual requirements of Germany for a single month, but if it had been supplied quickly it would have gone far toward simplifying the tremendous problem of maintaining a semblance of order in Germany.
Weeks passed, however, and no food came. With the Bolshevik conflagration spreading from city to city, long debates were carried on as to what fire department should be summoned and what kind of uniforms the firemen should wear. More districts of East Prussia and Posen, the chief granaries of Northeastern Germany and Berlin, were lost to Germany. There was a serious shortage of coal and gas in the cities.
Strikes became epidemic. Work was no longer occasionally interrupted by strikes; strikes were occasionally interrupted by work. Berlin's electric power-plant workers threw the city into darkness, and the example was followed in other cities. The proletarians were apparently quite as ready to exploit their brother proletarians as the capitalists were. Coal miners either quit work entirely or insisted on a seven-hour day which included an hour and a half spent in coming to and going from work, making the net result a day of five and a half hours. Street-car employees struck, and for days the undernourished people of the capital walked miles to work and home again. The shops were closed by strikes, stenographers and typewriters walked out; drivers of garbage wagons, already receiving the pay of cabinet ministers, demanded more pay and got it. From every corner of the country came reports of labor troubles, often accompanied by rioting and sabotage.
In most of these strikes the hand of Spartacus and the Independent Socialists could be discerned. The working people, hungry and miserable, waiting vainly week after week for the food which they believed had been promised them, were tinder for the Bolshevist spark. The government's unwise method of handling the problem of the unemployed further greatly aggravated the situation. The support granted the unemployed often or perhaps generally was greater than their pay in their usual callings. A man with a wife and four children in Greater Berlin received more than fourteen marks daily. The average wage for unskilled labor was from ten to twelve marks, and the result was that none but the most conscientious endeavored to secure employment, and thousands deliberately left their work and lived on their unemployment-allowances. Two hundred thousand residents of Greater Berlin were receiving daily support from the city by the middle of February, and this proportion was generally maintained throughout the country. This vast army of unemployed further crippled industry, imposed serious financial burdens upon an already bankrupt state, and—inevitable result of idleness—made the task of Bolshevist agitators easier.
The Spartacans, who since their defeat in Berlin in January had been more carefully watched, began to assemble their forces elsewhere. Essen became their chief stronghold, and the whole Ruhr district, including Düsseldorf, was virtually in their hands. Other Spartacan centers were Leipsic, Halle, Merseburg, Munich, Nuremberg, Mannheim and Augsburg. All this time, however, they were also feverishly active in Berlin. A general strike, called by the Spartacans and Independent Socialists for the middle of February, collapsed. A secret sitting of the leaders of the Red Soldiers' League on February 15th was surprised by the authorities, who arrested all men present and thus nipped in the bud for a time further preparations for a new revolt. The Independents made common cause with the Spartacans in demanding the liberation of all "political prisoners," chief among whom were Ledebour, who helped organize the revolt of January 5th, and Radek, "this international criminal," as Deputy Heinrich Heine termed him in a speech before the Prussian Diet.
The respite, however, was short. On Monday, March 3d, the Workmen's Council now completely in the hands of the enemies of the government called a general strike. Street cars, omnibuses and interurban trains stopped running, all business was suspended and nightfall plunged the city into complete darkness. This was the signal for the first disturbances. There was considerable rioting, with some loss of blood, in the eastern part of the city beyond Alexander Platz, a section always noted as the home of a large criminal element. Spartacans, reinforced by the hooligan and criminal element—or let it rather be said that these consisted and had from the beginning consisted mainly of hooligans and criminals—began a systematic attack on police-stations everywhere. Thirty-three stations were occupied by them during the night, the police officials were disarmed and their weapons distributed to the rabble that was constantly swelling the ranks of the rebels.