In Philadelphia, Reed stood outside a closed hall on May 31, and harangued a crowd of 1,000 about the case and the war until police dragged him away. He was arrested for inciting a riot, and posted $5,000 bail. Reed became more aggressively political, intolerant, and self-destructive. On September 14, he was arrested for the third time since returning from Russia, charged with violating the Sedition Act and freed on $5,000 bail. This was a day after possibly the largest demonstration for Bolshevik Russia was held in the United States (in The Bronx). Reed had passionately defended the revolution, which he seemed to think was coming to America as well. He tried to prevent Allied intervention in Russia, arguing that the Russians were contributing to the war effort by checking German ambitions in the Ukraine and Japanese designs on Siberia, but this argument came to naught.