Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1919-02-05
GERMANY AbADEL
ONASSEMBLY 'SEVE
National Legislative Body to
Gather as Clash of Fac
tons Is Heard.
BEATEN, ALL FOR PEACE
BEATEN, ALL FOR PEACE
by BEN HEIGHT.
to The Evening Star and
Chicago Daily News. Copyright. 1919.

| BY BEN HEIGHT.
Cablegram to The Evening Star and
Chicago Daily News. Copyright. 1919.
| BERLIN, February 5.-On the eve
of the national assembly in Weimar.
Germany sounds like political Tower
of Babel. The cauital is plastered
and criss-crossed with photographic
sheets until il has the appearance of
a free-for-alI cubist exhibition. Daily
interviews are forthcoming from busy
and diverse messiahs who are equally
cryptic and grotesaue.
| Two things only appear certain. One
is that the Spartacus cause is dead
| in Germany-how dead remains for
the Weimar assembly to establish
the other that all the people who
were in favor of war have myster-
iously vanished.
All the officials, semi-officials and
plain job hunters with whom I have
spoken in the past week assured me
that they conducted secret anti
war propaganda for four years. Even
former soldiers, when interviewed.
announce that they fought under
protest against their better judgment.
Psychology of Defeat.
The present German attitude is un-
doubtedly due to the psychology of
convince the world that the kaiser
clique is dead. The kaiser clique.
however, is no more dead than is the
grand Utopian halIelujah which ush-
cred in the revolution.
During the last month Ebert.
Sol aId Ion n nd M hnr a u
socialist leaders have been preparing
to compromise with various other
German parties. OF all the large
glowing talk concerning schemes to
socialize industry and divide wealth
and establish the worlds first
economic democracy, only the en-
FILTERED threats of the Spartacans
and the swan whoops of the expiring
independent socialists remain.
Between trying to convince the
world that Germany is starving, try
ing to regain a toehold on the vanish
ing colonies and trying to persuade
the German worlingmen that Ger
many is socialist state. while en-.
world that it is not. the present Ebert
Scheidemann government sounds as
coherent as boiler factory.
The only coherent utterances in Ber-a
lin are the injured unburdenings of
the independent socialists. have in
terviewed most of their leaders, in
GLIDING Hugo Haase, Emil Barth, Ru-
dolph Breitscheid and DIR. Ernest
Friedrich. OF these, Dr. Breitscheid
was the most lucid He was minister
of the interior during the first seven
weeks of the revolution and then re-
signed by request. He is not a Sparta
can. Only minor per cent of the in
dependents are in fact Spartacans. He
and the other leaders hold exactly the
same notions as Herr Ebert held when
the revolution was inaugurtted, but
they have refused to relinquish theo-
retical idealism in the face of practi-
cal politics. as have Ebert and Scheide-
mann.
Back to Monarchist Conception.
ardhist conception OF government"
said DIR. Breitscheid. 1.-THE soldiers
and workers council is now on its
last legs. Weimar will end in the eS-
Establishment of the same iron German
government minus the uniform. as
before
I'VE independents have been called
Spartacans. This has been merely a
government trick to diseredit U.s. In
stead of being Spartacans we are the
chief buffer. against bolshevism. The
German workman clings to the In
dependent party. 1t Is his only hope
that socialism, In the name of which
he overthrow the kaiser and his OPP
pressors, viii be realized.
when the independent party ceases
to exist hundreds and hundreds of
thousands of embittered and suffer-
ing workers will turn to anarchy.
The Observation-Disclosures government,
and also the leaders of the German
democratic party, are using America
Ito squash all opposition. America is
the new German Santa Claus. The
|reactionaries are spreading the propa-
ganda that If the German people do
not keep quiet and sit with their
hands folded Santa Claus will not
come with food"
At this point in the interview Max
imilian Harden called on the tele-
phone. Il cannot get a pass to go to
Copenhagen to get some food" COM
planned DIR. Breitscheid. Cheer up"
returned Herr Harden. sold times
are returning. We win yet celebrate
the kaisers next birthday with pa
radeS and bonfires-"