The anti-war demonstrations in Germany range all the way from the smashing of a few food-shop windows to the complete preparations for a serious crippling of the armies in the field by a general munition strike.

Half-way between were the so-called “Liebknecht riots” in Berlin.  The notices summoning these semi-revolutionary meetings were whispered through factories, and from mouth to mouth by women standing in the food lines waiting for their potatoes, morning bread, meat, sugar, cheese, and other supplies.  Liebknecht was brought to secret trial on June 27th, on the evening of which demonstrations took place throughout the city.  I was present at the one near the Rathaus, which was dispersed towards midnight when the police actually drew their revolvers and charged the crowd.

The following evening I was at an early hour in the Potsdamer Platz, where a great demonstration was to take place.  It was the second anniversary of the murder at Sarajevo.  The city was clearly restless, agitated; people were on the watch for something to happen.  The Potsdamer Platz is the centre through which the great arteries of traffic flow westward after the work of the day is done.  The people who stream through it do not belong to the poorer classes, for these live in the east and the north.  But on this mild June evening there was a noticeably large number of working men in the streets leading into the Platz.  I was standing near a group of these when the evening editions appeared with the news that Liebknecht had been sentenced.  A low murmur among the workmen, mutterings of suppressed rage when they realised the significance of the short trial of two days, and a determined movement toward the place of demonstration.

I hurried to the Potsdamer Platz.  The number of police stationed in the streets leading into it increased.  The Platz itself was blue with them, for they stood together in groups of six, ten and twelve.  I went along the Budapester Strasse to the Brandenburger Tor, through which workmen from Moabit had streamed at noon declaring that they would strike.  They had been charged by the mounted police, who drove them back across the Spree.  There was a blue patrol along the Unter den Linden now.  A whole army corps of police were on the alert in the German capital.

I returned to the Potsdamer Platz.  It was thick with people now—­curious onlookers.  There were crowds of workmen in the adjacent streets, but they were not allowed to approach too near.  Again and again they tried, but, unarmed, they were powerless when the horses were driven into them, I saw a few of the most obstinate struck with the flat of sabres, and on others were rained blows from the police on foot.  Nobody hit Back, or even defended himself.

There was practically no violence such as one expects from a mob.  It was something else which impressed me.  It impressed my police-lieutenant friend, also.  That was the dangerous ugliness in the workmen.  Hate was written in their faces, and the low growl in the crowd told all too plainly the growing feeling against the war.