olub had taken them over, we were told. There seemed to be some mystery about this institution. It was suspected that the new tenants were another of the private gambling associations which are constantly opening new places in the West End of Berlin. But no one imagined what was in faot the case, that the so-called olub was the headquarters of the German Monarchist movement. The supposed "manager was a Lieutenant Rossbach, who had raised a corps of his own in the Baltic Provinces. The clerks were all officers, the waiters non-commissioned officers of the Baltic troops, and machine-guns were gradually hidden in the cellars, to be used in the coming coup. It was here that, under the guise of card-parties, the councils were held which planned the Junker revolution. Noske was warned that this olub was not the harmless place it purported to be, and ordered it to be watched. But Junker adherents in his own ministry suppressed compromising reports on their secret headquarters. It was characteristic of the Junker plotters that they took no trouble to gain the support of influential civilians for their oause. They needed, of course, some instrument to fill the post of Chancellor, and chose Dr Kapp, an East Prussian provincial official. Kapp obtained brief notoriety during the war by a quarrel with BethmannHollweg, who accused him, even then, of misusing the national flag for party ends, whereupon Kapp, with characteristio futility, challenged the Chancellor to a duel. But the Junkers' lack of foresight in not securing the support of any of the staffs of State Departments contributed much to bring about their ultimate collapse. Twenty thousand troops, the old Imperial flag, and bands to play "Deutschland über Alles" that was the equipment with which the Junkers set out to seize the power in Germany. Their programme beyond that was vague in the extreme, but they were confident in their own minds that the natural ability, courage, and ruthlessness of the Prussian officer would do the rest. The sole prop and mainstay of the Junker plot was thus based on what is left of the German Army. And there was one man in Germany who, ever since the Kaiser abdicated, had held entire responsibility for the army towards the German nation. That man was Gustav Noske, late Minister of National Defence. He has paid for his failure to demooratise this stronghold of Junker spirit with the loss of his place in the Cabinet, and the unanimous dislike of all parties in the State. What can be said for Noske is that he did as much as was humanly possible to tame the lion into a watchdog, but failed because on the first provocation the beast be thought was docile reverted to type. Noske is a big, burly, selfconfident man, with a manuer so rough and domineering that the inaccurate report circu Noske fitted easily into the post of Chief of the German Army. He took decisions with resolution; his military edicts under martial law were terse and energetic. He quickly came to be regarded as the tower of strength of the Republican Government. The Advanced Socialists, indeed, infuriated by his ruthless repression of Spartacism in 1919, abused him whole-heartedly as a tyrant. For a time it looked as if Noske really had a firm grip on the wheel. But there was one great inherent weakness in his position which has eventually brought about his downfall. Running an army is a highly technical business, and Noske could only carry it on through the co-operation of the caste of regular Prussian officers whose lifelong study such work had been, These officers, upon whom he came implicitly to rely, were at heart reactionaries almost to a man. Until their own plans were ripe, and only till then, did they make semblance of serving the Republican régime. The cause of this unfaithfulness of the army officers towards the Republican Government lay chiefly in the forlorn hope that by putting a Junker Cabinet in power they might save their own jobs, which were threatened with speedy extinction by the Peace Treaty. The Peace of Versailles provided that the German Army should be reduced first to 200,000 men, and three months later to 100,000 men, and the ultimate date fixed for the completion of this whole process W88 10th July 1920. An army of 100,000 men needs at the most 4000 officers, but 32,000 officers of the regular German Army alone came back from the war, so that no less than 28,000 of these were now doomed to start life all over again, among civilians whom they had always despised as an inferior race. The pretext which the Junkers chose to put all these favourable conditions to good use on their own behalf was a flimsy one. The demand was first put forward in the re IV. actionary organs of the German Press that the Cabinet should be reorganised by the admission of four non-political "expert" ministers. They demanded in fact that repre sentation out of all proportion to their political strength or influence in the country should be given to them in the Cabinet. The alleged ground for this demand was that the existing Government was blind to the imminent danger of a Bolshevist offensive against Germany, and that the constant reduction of the German Army which, according to the Peace Treaty, the Cabinet was carrying out, exposed the country to certain invasion and anarchy. No effort was spared by the Junkers to make the flesh of the Allies creep in the same way. Ludendorff himself sought every opportunity of meeting privately any Allied national in Berlin, to whom he would develop his scheme for a joint German and Allied offensive against the Russian Red Army this spring. If his scheme were not adopted, he prophesied grimly, all Europe would be submerged in a flood of Bolshevist anarchy. that for which they now intended it, since it had played a decisive part in the crushing of the Spartacist risings in Berlin at the beginning of 1919. On March 11 General von Lüttwitz, commander of the Berlin garrison, who had hitherto passed for Noske's right-hand man, demanded to вее the President of the Republic, who received him in Noske's presence. The General adopted a tone of threatening insubordination. "In the name of the army," he demanded that "expert" Ministers from the ranks of the reactionary party in the State should be taken into the Government. His manner, and the entirely unconstitutional nature of this attempt to interfere with the political life of the State, admitted of only one reply. General von Lüttwitz was relieved of his command. He turned with a sneer to Noske as the Minister announced his intention to issue this order: "You have not the power to carry it out," he said. But neither in their demand for Cabinet representation, nor in their agitation of the Bol- When Lüttwitz left the shevist bogey did the Junkers Chancellor's palace his mind have success. Meanwhile time was made up. He got into was pressing. If the Junkers his motor car and drove were to act at all, they realised straight out to Döberitz Camp, that they must do so before the ten miles westward of Berlin, progressive disbandment of the where lay the Marine Brigade army weakened them too much and details of the Baltic troops in their main weapon, which, the latter ready to be joined after all, was not negotiation at a moment's notice by many but brute force. In particu- of their former disbanded lar, they needed to anticipate members. the dissolution on April 1 of the Marine Brigades of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, commanded by Captain Ehrhardt, a formation that had already stood its trial in such work as Not till next day did the Cabinet hold a meeting to disouss the trouble which was obviously brewing in the higher ranks of the Berlin garrison. They were by no means aware how far the preparations of the conspirators had already gone. Noske's staff had kept him in the dark, and he poohpoohed the likelihood of the movement of disaffection taking an active form. He announced that he had issued warrants of arrest, in his capacity as administrator of martial law, against Dr Kapp, the principal civilian ally of the militarist malcontents, together with Captain Pabst, who was known to have played a subordinate part in the organisation of the trouble. These measures against people who were instruments rather than promoters were all that Noske took. About midnight on March 12, however, the Cabinet suddenly realised that they were confronted by a serious military revolution, for the news reached them that the troops at Döberitz Camp were parading for a night march on Berlin. Between midnight and 3 A.M. late-returning Berliners found the streets of the city, to their complete amazement, looking like those of a town a few miles behind the front in war-time during an advance. The Reichswehr troops, quartered in the barracks in the centre of the city, had been turned out; the "Green Police"-a picked gendarmerie of Noske's own creation-were concentrated round the Ministerial quarter, 9000 men in all; field-guns were posted at commanding street corners; barbedwire barricades were being hurriedly erected; there was every sign of preparation for streetfighting on a large scale. Meanwhile, along the deadstraight "Döberitz Army Street," the asphalt avenue which was made to connect the Kaiser's palace direct with the chief military station near the capital, sped a motor-car containing Generals von Oven and von Oldershausen, sent by Noske to parley with the mutineers, and try to dissuade them by grave warnings of the Government's preparations for resistance. This mission failed entirely. The Generals found Döberitz parade - ground already filled with troops falling-in under the white light of the electric arc - lamps. General von Lüttwitz, till recently their chief, told them curtly to return to Berlin and inform the Government that by 6.30 A.M. the Junker troops would be at the Victory Avenue, a couple of hundred yards from the Brandenburg Gate, which is the entrance to the heart of Berlin. If by that time the Cabinet had not accepted the demands already made for the inclusion of Junker Ministers in the Cabinet, the various Ministries and Government offices would be seized by force. With this alarming report the Generals drove at top speed of their car down the deserted Army Street back to the capital. Already outposts of the Government troops were posting themselves in the suburbs, but the spirit of the men was dubious. Whom were they going to fight? they asked. Why should they be called to fire on compatriots in uniform? Noske and Ebert, the President, had been driving round By this time the population of Charlottenburg, the West End suburb which lies beyond the Tiergarten, were awakened from their beds by the unusual din of "Deutschland über Alles" and Prussian marches being played with gusto by military bands. They looked the streets of Berlin all night, watching the preparations for resistance, but at 4 A.M. on Saturday morning, the 13th, the Cabinet met again at the house of the Chancellor in the Wilhelmstrasse. General von Oven made his report from Döberitz. The Government had to take an immediate from their windows upon a decision. Should they fight spectacle that to most of them or fly? Noske said, Fight! seemed entirely unaccountable, "With a couple of dozen for there, marching past in all machine-guus the whole thing the pre-war pomp and pride of can be crushed," he urged, and the German Army, was a long wanted to lead the resistance grey column of troops, at the personally. General Reinhard, head of each company in which who had been Military Gover- was carried the old, abolished, nor of Berlin during the Spar- Kaiser's naval war-flag of an tacist rising last year, and iron cross on a black ground. shown himself a heavy-handed It must have looked to most soldier, supported the Minister, of them as if the Monarchy had but the majority of such senior been restored as by a miracle officers of the Ministry of De- overnight, for till then practifence as had remained faithful cally no inkling of the Junker to the Cabinet were of a con- conspiracy had reached the trary opinion. general public. The other Ministers, too, insisted that the Government must do everything they could to avert civil war, and by 5 A.M. it had been decided that the Cabinet should evacuate the capital and remove the seat of national government to Dresden. Otherwise, as Dr Schiffer, the Minister of Justice, who was destined to play a conspicuous part in the events of the next few days, pointed out, they would be arrested by the intruders, and with that would lose all practical claim to authority in the country. It was essential that they should remain a Government de facto as well as de jure. Schiffer himself, it was decided, should remain in Berlin to keep in contact with the rebels. Heading the column was a motor-car containing General Lüttwitz and Dr Kapp, the military and civilian leaders who were to overturn the political fortunes of Germany. In another oar fellowed Colonel Bauer, reputed to be the ablest General Staff-officer of the German Army, friend and confidant both of the ex-Crown Prince and of General Ludendorff, and with him, Trebitsch Lincoln, a Hungarian Jew, whose record of adventure and crime amused all England and America during the war. Trebitsch Lincoln had last vanished from the public eye in 1915, when he was sent to a British jail to serve a sentenoe of three years for forgery. Before that he had fulfilled |